Kiwanis Charter a Builders Club at ZMS

ZANESVILLE, Ohio – The Kiwanis Club of Zanesville officially chartered a youth leadership program earlier this week at the Zanesville Middle School. 

The Builders Club is a youth-led organization that incorporates community service and leadership development into the lives of middle school students.

“Well in the Builders Club, we’re basically people who will help the community. We will help people in need or help different organizations, like maybe set up different stuff, help the students, help the school. We just mainly help people who need it or ask for our help,” Zanesville Middle School 7th Grader Braeden Hill said. 

A key Builders Club initiative is to demonstrate how they can make a difference in the community and one of their initial projects was a peanut sale that helped raise funds to provide Christmas gifts for kids in need. 

“I hope it evolves into something really huge. As someone who was a part of the Kiwanis Key Club, which is the high school level, myself when I was in high school many moons ago. I really enjoyed being able to give back to the community. I think it’s important that we’re aware of what’s going on in our community. If we have students who are excited to give back to others, we want to obviously allot them that opportunity,” Zanesville Middle School Intervention Specialist Andrea Minnich said.

In a world of screen time seclusion, the Builders Club is offering students opportunities to create and expand their social skillsets in ways that can create positive impacts and better communities.