View of the skyline (from Christina's boat!)

Three members of the U of M Circle K embarked on the adventure to Chicago– Josh (a Children’s Service committee member), Matt (a Membership Development committee member), and Cindy, our CKI MI District Secretary– in order to explore the city, take in the sights, and meet up with Christina, our club secretary. While in the city, they checked out Millennium Park, including the infamous bean:

The group also walked all over downtown Chicago, saw City Hall, and even checked out the law firm Christina worked at last summer. They headed over to Buckingham Fountain, walked around the museum campus, and visited Shedd Aquarium, where they saw snapping turtles, lungfish, beluga whales, and dolphins!

That evening, they took Christina’s boat out for a ride on the lake, enjoyed dinner, and watched the fireworks go off at Navy Pier.

A trip to Chicago also wouldn’t be complete without walking down Navy Pier, and taking in the view of the city from the ferris wheel.

Who's excited to be in Chicago?

We are!

Unfortunately, all good things must come to an end. And so, our three adventurous Circle K’ers made their way back to Ann Arbor on Sunday.

Don't be sad, Josh, there's always Holiday Embrace in Chicago in January!

If you want to check out other socials going on throughout the year, check out the calendar! The August large-scale social will be a relaxing day on Martindale Beach at the Kensington Metropark, so come join us!

I feel that summertime is a great time to try new projects and explore service possibilities. Even though the school year ends, service at U of M is still in full swing and I experienced this first hand when I volunteered at English as a Second language with Washtenaw Literacy at the Mallets Creek Branch of the Ann Arbor Library during spring semester. This project helps teach people of any age how to speak English, and as volunteers we assist by engaging in conversations and helping out with worksheets and games that their tutors provide. I was really worried because I couldn’t speak Spanish and I really did not know what to expect, but once I attended I was hooked. The tutors were absolutely amazing and really included me into their groups as a volunteer. The people were also wonderful. I met men and women from Costa Rica, Italy, China, Russia and Korea and they all had amazing stories to tell. There was one woman from Italy who had recently graduated college and she told me all about graduation in Italy, which was really different from the way we do things at U of M, and it really put things into perspective for me. In addition, I always felt great after attending and it really brightened my day after having Physical Chemistry earlier in the morning. I attended throughout June and in addition to meeting some great people at the project, I also got to know some more of our volunteers both members and non-members of our club. It made car rides there awesome! So if you are around during the summer and wondering what to do check out some of our projects! From my experiences they can bring a summer from dull to amazing!

District Convention 2011

Besides attending a new project, I also began my new position as a service chair. I really became interested in wanting to be part of the clubs leadership team after I attended this years district convention, where I learned all about circle k and its related clubs. It has so far been a great experience and I encouraged anyone interesting to check out our leadership positions at the club, district, and international levels. One of my duties as a service chair is to manage summer projects and in the summer months I am in charge of the Michigan Abilities Center Therapeutic Riding program. This is another amazing summer project you can try. It involves helping with horseback riding lessons for those who are in physical or emotional pain. It is an amazingly rewarding project and one I suggest to anyone who likes people, animals, or the outdoors. They actually have an upcoming event July 30^th!

Therapeutic Riding at MAC

In addition to Mac, I have been planning a couple of upcoming projects, which include Synod Residential Services carnival fun day and the Out of the Darkness Suicide Prevention Walk. Synod Residential Services is an organization that provides housing and activities for the differently abled and they really want volunteers to help at their fun day which will include helping set up, running carnival games, supervising the moonwalk, and clean up.  We even get to play the games and participate in the carnival! The Out of the Darkness Walk is to help raise money for suicide prevention and awareness and people can walk or just volunteer and I will be setting up fundraising dates as well. Both of these projects are in early September and I am really excited to be planning them!

Suicide Prevention Walk 2010, join us this year!

Basically a summer full of Circle K has been awesome and I have been excited about developing myself as a servant leader. I had to start somewhere and what better time than summer?  Look for all upcoming and current projects Health and Wellness projects on the calendar and please email me if you’re interested in anything or just to say hey!

Peace and CK Love,

Melinda

We spent the majority of the week in Camp Michigania’s Education Center. This was where we attended our workshops, ate, played games, did work, and napped between sessions. The Education Center has a no shoes policy, so we were always comfortable chilling in our socks. The first day, Circle K and the 21 other organizations that attended were instructed to create a Facebook page representing our organization. As you can see, we requested to be in a relationship with K-grams, since K-grams was an idea that originated in Circle K, and we love K-grams!

Circle K Facebook page

There were many organizations at Leadership Connection that I had never even heard of, such as Here Earning a Destiny Through Honesty, Eagerness, and Determination of Self (H.E.A.D.S.), Living Arts, Migrant and Immigrant Rights Awareness (MIRA), and Sa Nima Collaborative. Although the  missions of each organization might be slightly different, we learned throughout the week that our organizations are much more similar than they are different.

On the second day, we were separated into teams for the low ropes course. This consisted of a series of challenges that we had to solve as a team. We led each other through a “minefield” while blindfolded, crossed a “river” using carpet squares, balanced on a large board, successfully jumped into hula hoops, and used wooden planks to move to different “islands.” The low ropes course was one of my favorite activities at Leadership Connection because it brought us closer (literally and figuratively) and showed us the amazing things that can be accomplished when we all work together.

Low ropes course team

That night, we were also instructed to decide on our organization’s top 5 values. To do this, the facilitators gave us stickers with the names of values on them. The moral of this story for everyone at Leadership Connection was: Don’t give Circle K stickers. After we used the stickers we needed for our values, we spent the rest of the week sticking them on each other, as well as on people from other organizations.

Vivian getting Brandon back

One of the most meaningful discussions we had at Leadership Connection was about campus climate at the University of Michigan. We talked about how campus may not be as safe for minority groups as we would like to believe it is, and how it is up to us to change this. At this point, trust had been established between all of us, so we could discuss this serious topic without the fear of being judged.

Although we learned so much from the amazing facilitators (Jimmy, Gabe, Jen aka Tina Fey, Emily, Sara, Kate, Karla, Nick and Scott), my favorite part was getting to know people from different organizations better. I was surprised when I met the boys of Beta Theta Pi and they told me that they’re a social fraternity with a mission to improve the image of social fraternities by being a dry house and making an impact on the community. I was inspired when the girls of SAPAC shared their desire for a world where no one is made fun of for emphasizing the importance of consent in sexual relations. I was in awe when Hema from Michigan Sahana performed a classic Indian dance for us, and when Becky from MIRA and Ellie from SAPAC had the courage to perform songs that they wrote themselves in front of all of us.

And finally, I laughed with everyone. A lot. By the end of Leadership Connection, all 83 of us were like a little family. I think it’s safe to say that we are all experiencing some withdrawal symptoms right about now. If you ever get the chance to go to Leadership Connection, I would highly recommend that you take advantage of the opportunity. This experience has opened my eyes to the wonderful things that we can accomplish together, as well as made me proud to attend a school with so many amazing people.

CK Love,

Melanie

Action plans for the new goals of each organization

The time Circle K reps. Vivian, Brandon, and Melanie and I spent at Camp Michigania for Leadership Connection 2011 last week deserves some blog-space. I want to share some of the themes we discussed and lessons we learned in about 4 days worth of sessions, and I don’t want to forget the somewhat less important details like the new hand language, games, theme songs, and our so, so beautiful surroundings.

Zoomed in view from the back porch of the Education Center.

Some basics about Leadership Connection — It’s put on by the office of Student Activities and Leadership and happens at Camp Michigania in Petoskey, a site owned by the Michigan Alumni Association. Every May, about 22 student organizations that have applied to attend are accepted, and each can send between three and five members at no cost. According to its page on the Office of Student Activities and Leadership site, Leadership Connection serves to:

. . . provide opportunities that strengthen student organizations’ intra-group and inter-group development. Areas of focus for the week include collaboration, service and community responsibility, ethical decision making, and addressing campus climate. Students and students organization are able to create more efficient organizational practices and social justice consciousness.

That sounds about right.

So, serious stuff first. On day one, we were introduced to each other through a run-through of minute-long “student organization commercials” and a good number of ice-breakers. Some of the ‘org’s there that come to mind were SAPAC, a fraternity Beta Theta Pi, a Latina sorority, a few engineering school groups like the National Society of Black Engineers (Nez-bee) and Society of Women Engineers (Sweeeeeee), Michigan Sahana (an Indian classical dance group), a Dental Hygienists group, Mock Trial, Migrant and Immigrants’ Rights Awareness, HEADS (double acronym for Here Earning A Destiny through Honesty Eagerness and Determination of Self), MPowered, and both MSA’s.

We eventually formed pods of three — we were with SAPAC and Sahana — to discuss how we perceive ourselves and how that differs from our image on campus. It seems Circle K’s other two tenets, Friendship and Leadership, and the fact that anyone can sign up for a project on the calendar are not clearly understood outside our club. UH OH. Later in the week, we discussed our mission/values, organizational culture, and future goals with our pod.

Outside the pod, each of us learned a bit about our how we may operate differently as leaders depending on our Myers-Briggs types – that’s the one where you end up with 4 letters – as well as how ethics relates to leadership. Later in the week, there was a great circle dialogue about Campus Climate – particularly for minorities – and the influence we can have on that climate, lessons on collaboration, S.M.A.R.T. goal-setting, time-management, conflict-management, and how student organizations tend to operate in cycles.

The Session Room with excellent ambience.

Outside the Education Center, which was more like a big comfy lodge, we spent an afternoon doing ‘team-building exercises’ in groups of about 12-14 OUT IN THE WOODS! Too bad it was freezing cold that day.

From afar, Viv, Mel, Brandon, and my group for the "Low Ropes" activities.

Now for some of the more heartwarming aspects  of our week:

Each time we got back into the classroom for a session, our facilitators read us ’status updates’ from the ’status updates’ box. The theme of the week was Facebook, so not only did each group create a facebook profile posters, but everyone embraced the status update opportunity. Some highlights from those include updates about Keith of Engineering Global Leadership needing to wear a shirt, song lyrics from Firework, Meerkat Fun Facts, Friend Requests, and comments appreciative of Brandon’s smile. =)

Making our Facebook page poster

Another heartwarming aspect was the music. Some favorites of everyone from Gabe’s (a facilitator) iTunes playlist were “Firework”, “I Want it That Way”, “Party in the USA”, and “Friday”. Even better though were Ellie (of SAPAC), Becky (of MIRA), and Rita (of Living Arts) ’s guitar-playing and songwriting around the camp-fire. On the last night, not only was there a hoppin’ dance party, but one that turned into a talent show of fraternity/sorority steps, Indian classical dance, Chinese yo-yo, and Funktion hip-hop. Afterward, Becky taught us how to do the worm (it still hurts Martha to lift her toothbrush), Tejash of Sahana and Shreya of Michigan Student Assembly taught us how to Banghra in a circle, and Kat of the Latina sorority taught us some Merengue. In the wee hours of the morning, piano talent was revealed from Kat, Nancy of MPowered, Vishi of Sahana, and Anoop of UMEC. It was all very impressive.

Jordan and Jared of Mock Trial

By the end of the week, all 70-ish of us were ‘connected’ not only through friendship and common goals, but also some pretty sweet hand-motions, mostly thanks to the Mock Trial trendsetters. First, there was the basic knocking motion in the air meaning “agreed” and horizontal hand slicing motion for “no way”. Then there was the “A” symbol (both hands up making a triangle) for “A-team!”. At first, this was Mock Trial just boasting their awesome-ness, but by the end everyone was on the A-team. Finally, most dear to my hear was the snapping which sounded whenever there was a widespread feeling of empathy or deep affirmation of what someone had just shared or was sharing. For example, there tended to be more snap frequency during circle dialogues, and there were a lot of snaps as the facilitators gave their last words during the closing session.

-Martha

For further reading about this year’s LC, you could take a look at the tumblr.

Remaining Pictures!

Blue sky!

On the porch

By the lake. Katy was the one with the camera.

The Generation Found team after its first planning meeting.

My name is Chris Cannon, and I’m a member of the Kiwanis Family Relations Committee and the incoming Leadership Education and Development Committee Chair. During our spring break, fourteen members of Circle K, including me, worked together to plan a trip to Brooklyn, NY as part of SERVE’s Alternative Spring Break. Our mission: volunteer at Madison Square Boys and Girls Club located at 2245 Bedford Avenue.

This boys and girls club, under the direction of the passionate Mr. Stan King at 7 feet, allows a safe place for 2^nd to 12^th graders to do homework, play games, and socialize after school. Don’t let the size of the program’s director intimidate you because he is one of the sweetest people I have ever met – so dedicated and involved in the lives of the children!

During the week, all of us separated and work with different age groups, such as the 6-9 (explorers), 10-12, and 13-18 (teenagers). Personally, I volunteered with the 2^nd grade “explorers” for most of the week; they are rambunctious and spontaneous, but also welcoming and so darn adorable! The first hour is dedicated to homework help. Many of us had preconceived notions that students who attend schools in the urban Brooklyn have an educational deficit. However, the knowledge of the students is similar to that of any other typical classroom. Some students were very passionate about their schoolwork, always seeking out further readings, diligently working through their practice books, and inquiring about college. It was truly inspiring to see how eager many of the young students were in striving for success at such a young age!

How many of you were consciously aware of the concept of race in 2^nd grade? I can’t remember differentiating or even being fully aware of diversity, coming from a very homogeneous educational background. However, for the most part, the students of the Boys and Girls Club who were black (many coming having family originally from outside the United States) noticed distinct differences. Several of us even had conversations with students about social justice-related issues about race and how we are genetically identical and though we may all look different, we are all the same. One student even remarkably noted in his retort to another student, “Mother nature is about volcanoes and rocks. We [the 2^nd grader and me] have the same blood.” This truly opened my eyes to how ideas about how race is conceived at such an early age for them – and they even had a firm grasp on how there isn’t a biological component to different races. It touched my heart when I heard this; it was simply amazing!

By the end of the week, we all had made such a strong bond with many of the students. We were drawn pictures, played board games with them, danced to the XBOX Kinect Dance Central along side of them (I think Circle K needs to invest in this wonderful piece of technology), and had fun watching them take pictures with our cameras. While we felt great about the impact we made by spending the week interacting with the students, it was definitely a bittersweet goodbye. They didn’t want to see us leave as much as we didn’t want to go. Tearing up definitely happened, and Mr. King even humorously noted that we were the weepiest group. The younger kids in particular didn’t understand why we had to leave and continuously inquired about when we would return to become staff members. If we could stay for longer, I don’t think any of us would have thought twice about staying for a longer duration. They may not remember our names in the future, but I know that our weeklong involvement definitely made a lasting impression in their lives.

We definitely plan on keeping in touch with the students that we made connections with as a continuation of the program. This will be a way to keep up with the students’ lives and a way to reflect on our work again and again. Most of us will agree that the first days back after the trip seemed almost surreal as if the Boys and Girls Club is our real home and we are taking a break by going back to Ann Arbor. If our service through Circle K hasn’t made us passionate about giving back yet, this trip has definitely solidified our continuing strive for servant leadership.

Number of miles roundtrip: 1300
Total hours of driving: 24
Number of Circle K-ers: 14
Days volunteering: 5
Number of mini-vans: 2
Having Tyllel hug me and call me his best friend: Unquantifiable

Circle K Love,

Chris Cannon

-Chelsea

I hope you all had a nice spring break and that classes are going well!  With all of the service opportunities, the month of March is a great time to volunteer!  I’m really pumped for March 26^th and 27^th because that weekend is Dance Marathon!

Last year's Circle K Dance Marathon team with Abby, the child our team works with!

Joe and Rosaline vs. Me and Jean in foosball with Pete and Natalie cheering us on!

Dance Marathon is a student run organization on campus that raises money and awareness for pediatric rehabilitation.  They host a Marathon that consists of the “dancers” (team participants) standing for 30 hours to raise awareness.  Every year Circle K has their own team that participates in raising money and standing and, in addition to that, every year we have a group of volunteers that come to moral for them!

Circle K's Dance Marathon waiting for the judges' rating of their Pokemon lip sync!

Joe shaking his thang with me holding the sign!

What is moraling? It’s going to the Marathon, cheering on the dancers, and supporting them! Dancers love massages, piggy back rides, surprises, and company!  There are also tons of cool things to do at the Marathon.  You can play basketball, do crafts with kids, participate in a rave, and, of course, learn this year’s line dance!  The Marathon truly is a memorable experience that supports an organization impacting the community in a wonderful way.

Chelsea, Sweta, Dan, Katy, and Justine were moralers last year!

Jen giving Cindy a piggy back ride! What a great moraler!

You can moral how ever long you want to.  So come for one hour, 4 hours, 30 hours, or whatever fits your schedule!   If you’re interested you can email Kelly, Jessica, Vivian, or Yuly and they will give you all the information you need!

Kelly kellyjd@umich.edu
Jessica jmccrury@umich.edu
Vivian vmyu@umich.edu
Yuly ywung@umich.edu

Kelly and other moralers made us this sweet sign! Rosaline, Joe, and I are pictured with her here!

Have a great day and I hope to see you at the Marathon!

Nicole (saghyni@umich.edu)

One awesome event coming up, CKI Service Week sponsored by the CKI Service Committee is taking place over this time period from March 27th to April 2nd, ending on Kiwanis One Day, the biggest day in service with the Kiwanis Family. CKI Service Week is to highlight CKI as an international network, CKI actually performs the most service hours per member in all of the Kiwanis Family! CKI Service Week can be used to unify us an organization and recognize and celebrate the transition into the new year! I’m excited to be on the administrative end of this International event, it is definitely going to be the most successful CKI Service Week yet! Not to mention, all participating clubs will be recognized at International Convention in Virginia Beach in June!

This weekend, I also traveled to Ohio District Convention with Nicole, Jessica, and Cindy to represent the CKI Service Committee as well as Michigan’s signature event Circle K Service Day. It was awesome to meet new people and promote our service initiatives! Michigan’s DCON is coming up, and I am very excited for it too, the weekend after Spring Break! Hope to see you there!

In service,
Natalie (natkitt@umich.edu)

My name is Katy Tylus, and I am the 2011-2012 Vice President for Circle K at U of M. We’ve made a lot of changes to our club’s structure over the past few weeks, and just this past weekend, we held committee chair interviews with the old and new board and we selected our 2011-2012 Leadership Team. I just wanted to introduce to you all the new committee structure so that you are more familiar with the change.

The membership of UM Circle K has grown tremendously in recent years.  To accommodate this recent growth, four new committees will be added to the current club structure in the upcoming year, bring the total up to 13 committees.  First, we decided to break up two of our current service committees to allow for more focused approaches next year with smaller committees. Health & Elderly has become the Health & Wellness Committee and the Elderly Outreach Committee. The Hunger, Housing, and Nature Committee has become the Hunger and Housing Committee and the Environment Committee. Aside from these new splits, we also have two new additional committees:

International Relations- This committee focuses on increasing awareness and collaboration with Circle K International. One of the prime focuses will be developing events and projects that highlight some of our service partners: UNICEF, Better World Books, Students Teaming Up to Fight Hunger (STUFH), and March of Dimes. This committee will also promote other international opportunities such as International Convention, Large Scale Service Project, Holiday Embrace, and CKI Service Week.

LEAD (Leadership, Education, and Development): This committee aims to ensure members have meaningful experiences in the club related to our five values: connections, excellence, innovation, passion, and servant leadership. They will help build the leadership skills of our members through events such as mini-workshops and LeadCon. They also focus on service learning and social justice through reflection and educational events.

In conjunction with the new committee structure, new committee chairs have recently been appointed for the 2011-2012 year and on behalf of the club, I would like to congratulate the following people:

Service Cluster
Children’s- Erika Chow
Elderly Outreach- Natalia Migas
Environment- Pete Wangwongwiroj
Health & Wellness- Melinda Dewald
Hunger & Housing- Marcus Bodner

External Cluster
Fundraising- Karen Hawley
International Relations- Melanie Browne
Kiwanis Family Relations- Megan Pratt
Public Relations- Gina Diciuccio

Internal Cluster
Historian- Diana Choi
LEAD- Chris Cannon
Membership Development- Jessica McCrury
Technology- Jason Meng

We’re looking forward to a year of new growth and development and are excited to see how these changes will increase the future success of the club! If you ever have any questions about the new structure, please feel free to let me know!

Best,

Katy Tylus

My name is Rosaline, and I am the Circle K Vice President. I hope you all are doing well and had a fabulous Valentine’s Day week! Best holiday ever! Definitely check out Target or Meijer for some post-Valentine’s Day candy sales

Anyways, I wanted to post on an event we had last Saturday (February 12) for our club members. Our Membership Development Committee hosted our annual LeadCon, which is a leadership workshop for our club members to meet new people and develop their leadership skills. After weeks of hard work and planning, the MD Committee was able to host a very successful and really fun LeadCon! They even made a super cool promo video for it. Check it out:

During LeadCon, we participated in a lot of really fun activities. First, we played a really fun ice breaker where we were put into groups and then we had to go around trying to come up with songs that included the word “baby” in them. It was quite hard, but my team came in second place!

Then, we did a team-building activity called Minefield. Two groups were paired together and each group had to create obstacles for the other group to have to lead someone through blindfolded. We got pretty creative, but it was cool to see how much the blindfolded group members trusted the rest of the group from the get go.

The next activity they had us do was a leadership quiz. It was pretty basic, and we found out if we were more like Superman, X-men, or Robin. I was one of the X-Men. Yes!

Then, we all got together with a partner. One of the partners had to leave the room and the other partners were told that they had to draw a penguin. The catch was that our partner who did not know what we were drawing had to hold the marker, and we had to hold the top of the marker and guide them. Most of us decided to act out what we were drawing before we began drawing (it was a penguin), but it was still kind of difficult, especially if you can’t draw like me! Look at this penguin that Vivian drew:

Lastly, we did a fun egg game. We were given a scenario (by the one and only Matt Gross) where we had to create a box that would help catch eggs that we drop while cooking. The box had to be cheap and effective. Our group came up with the Eggie, which was a nest-like tutu that you would place around your waist as you cooked. We were pretty proud of our product, and even came up with an infomercial! Another great product was O.V.A.R.I.E.S. (I forget what the acronym stood for, but the end of it was egg sac!). It was pretty fun, and then we had to actually MAKE an egg catching box, and test it out with a real egg. Ours failed =( But it was a really cool activity and we liked it a lot!

Throughout the event we also did a lot of reflection which helped us think about the meaning of all of the activities and what types of skills we were developing throughout the day. It was a great event, so congratulations MD Committee! You all should definitely check it out next year because it’s an annual Circle K tradition!

See you all later!

-Rosaline