Organizacijos aprašas

Kiwanis helps kids around the world. Local Kiwanis clubs look out for our communities and the international organization Kiwanis International takes on large-scale challenges, such as fighting disease and poverty. For more than a century, Kiwanis has created opportunities for children to be curious, safe and healthy regardless of the community in which they live. When you give a child the chance to learn, experience, dream, grow, succeed and thrive, great things can happen.

MISSION
Kiwanis is a global organization of volunteers dedicated to improving the world, one child and one community at a time.

VISION
Kiwanis will be a positive influence in communities worldwide — so that one day, all children will wake up in communities that believe in them, nurture them and provide the support they need to thrive.

VALUES
We are passionate about making a difference. Helping kids grow and succeed is at the heart of everything we do. But how we do it is just as important. We believe our neighborhoods and our world are best served when people of all ages and different backgrounds work together to share their time and talents.

KIWANIS SERVICE
We are a club-based organisation. Volunteers in clubs who provide meaningful service, are at the heart of the organisation. Service is at the heart of every Kiwanis club, no matter where in the world it’s located.
Kiwanis International is a global community of clubs, members and partners dedicated to improving the lives of children one community at a time. Today, we stand with more than 550,000 members from K-Kids to Key Club to Kiwanis and many ages in between in 80 countries and geographic areas. Each community has different needs, and Kiwanis empowers members to pursue creative ways to serve the needs of children, such as fighting hunger, improving literacy and offering guidance. Kiwanis clubs host nearly 150,000 service projects each year.
In Europe, we have +/- 1280 local clubs who all do service projects and raise money for communities, families and projects. We have different type of clubs in Europe: we have the classical service clubs that gather together, donate money or organize fundraising activities, but also clubs of people that do hands-on community service, organize youth camps, and help directly schools, child departments of hospitals, youth organisations…

WHO JOINS KIWANIS
Kiwanis club members believe in service. They care about children. They're interested in the community around them because the community matters to them.
They're people like you. Friends. Neighbors. Volunteers who want to make a difference. And they love to see the difference they make when they work together.
In Europe, we have clubs that are typically ‘old business men’-type, we have women clubs, we have ‘young professional clubs’ for people under 40, we have ‘Key-clubs’ (clubs in schools that do social projects), and some ‘Action clubs’ (for people with disabilities).

STRUCTURE
Kiwanis International is organized into local clubs, regional divisions, country nations and districts and European/International level. This multi-leveled leadership hierarchy means members are supported by a larger network of leaders who are prepared to help clubs be successful while improving communities.
In Europe, we have +/- 30’000 members that are all volunteers, organizing social activities and running their clubs.
We have 9 “districts”. These are grouped countries were there are more than 1’000 members, and where there is a strong sustainable governance structure in place. Each district is sub-devised in “divisions” or smaller regions, and that collate several local clubs.
E.g. in the district Switzerland-Liechtenstein, we have 23 divisions, that support 207 local clubs, in France-Monaco, we have 30 divisions and 250 clubs.
Districts are Belgium-Luxembourg, France-Monaco, Romania, Germany, Switzerland-Liechtenstein, Italy-San Marino, Iceland-Faroes, Norden, the Netherlands.
Countries that don’t have a high number of members to have this “heavy” structure, are named “nations”, like e.g. Hungary, Poland, Czech Rep. & Slovakia, U.K.,..

EUROPEAN OFFICE
The European office supports nations, districts and divisions to enhance club operations, to help them with volunteer management, and provides the leadership with trainings that are organized and coordinated at European level.
We provided support for branding, marketing and communication. We help organizing new clubs, and we provide membership support.
Aside several international webinars, we organize yearly several European trainings where we meet face-to-face. We go to the field to train leaders on the spot.
In the smaller ‘nations’, we provide direct support, with projects that we organize to help the volunteers to increase footprint with their projects, and to growth in the organisation. We have e.g. a pilot project running in Slovakia, where we have a trainer who assists the local clubs in volunteer management.