Kiwanis International is a non-profit service organization with members who want to change the world.
Key Club International is a branch of Kiwanis for high school students, and more professionally, it is called a Kiwanis Youth Program. It celebrated its centennial birthday on March 23, 2025.
Stroudsburg High School’s (SHS) Key Club has more than 100 active members who are ready to volunteer and contribute their time to the club. This club has been around at the SHS for about the last 10 years or more.
Nikolaos Kontos is the advisor of Key Club and has been for the past year. He commented that the workload was a daunting task; however, he agrees with many of its great values and is up for the challenge. The officers of the club include:
- President: Matthew Sanchez Nugra
- Vice President: Meron Domanski
- Secretary: Hadiya Hassan
- Treasurer: Caitlin Hoffman
- Editor: Tanya Sathapornwongkul
- Web-Master: Karen Helm
Key Club’s first volunteer opportunity of the year was Trunk or Treat at Morey Elementary School on October 29, 2024. Kids donated candy and chocolates and some even contributed their car trunks.
These volunteer hours are used as points for the kids in the club. Each student needs eight points per semester: four for volunteering and four for attending meetings.
They occasionally work with the Kiwanis club at East Stroudsburg South High School. In November 2024, members helped out all morning with their Pancake Day event.
As many families enjoyed their breakfasts, SHS students were helping the cooks in the kitchen by cleaning and organizing utensils and platters.
Hridita Hossain, ’27, who volunteered for the Pancake Day event, said, “I loved being able to help provide a healthy and tasty breakfast to friends and families. I also enjoyed helping my friends in the kitchen to clean the dishes.”
Later in December 2024, Key Club hosted a Breakfast with Santa event at Chipperfield Elementary School.
Kids were able to enjoy pancakes, crafts, a free show from the show choir, and not to mention a visit from Santa Claus.
The club has many events in the works, one of them being the Spring Clean Out which Jeffrey Sodl, the SHS principal, so graciously approved.
This was a last-minute attempt to celebrate the centennial anniversary of Kiwanis and Key Club International.
Kontos said, “The goal was to get some kids and people interested in donating clothes, books, shoes, and things they don’t need anymore to people who are less fortunate than themselves.”
The club aims to donate these gently used items to either Common Threads or the local libraries in the community.
They are trying to receive more donations since the event has not taken off like they hoped and is a work in progress right now.
If a student wants to donate anything, they can drop off items at C-105 (Kontos’s room) until the end of the first or second week of April.
Another bigger event they have coming up is an Easter Egg Hunt at the Stroudsburg Junior High School.
When asked about the event, Kontos commented, “It’s a family-friendly event. We have multiple different groups of students who are going to be able to participate and assist with different age ranges.”
This event is going to be for all ages, and according to Kontos, they will also have “food to buy at a local station that is going to be provided by the key club members.”
There will also be an area for yard games and relaxing, but it is encouraged to participate in the very fun egg hunt.
They are going to hold the egg hunt at three separate instances in time so students of different ages can participate in it.
Kontos commented that further information and details should be released around the first week of April, so make sure to keep an eye out for that. Key Club members are currently organizing a document for the event.
When asked why students should join Key Club next year, Kontos explained that it was a great organization dedicated to helping out the local community. He stated that the club “creates better atmospheres for students to be involved in community service…”
Also, to answer the most asked question students have when joining clubs at the beginning of the year, Kontos revealed the difference between Key Club and Interact Club, another club the SHS offers dedicated to community service.
He said, “Interact is more focused on community service in general across all areas. Key Club is more focused on helping students and children, so we do focus on having a kid-friendly focus; doing things for more kids than just regular community service.”
