Key Club is introducing a new initiative to help centralize volunteer hours at CHS by organizing the various service clubs the school offers. The initiative, Serve Carmel, will be rolled out over the next school year.

Allyson Ward, Key Club co- sponsor and social studies teacher, said, “This initiative is a way to link all the different service-type clubs together and to make that information more available to all students to get involved… so it doesn’t just have to be just a Key Club project(or another club’s).”

Approximately every one or two months, a representative from each club involved in the initiative will meet to discuss possible joint efforts and report upcoming volunteer opportunities they would like to share. These will be posted on the Clubs Canvas page according to Logan Tullai, Key Club Outreach Coordinator and junior. Tullai’s position is new this year and was added for the new initiative.

According to Abinay Devarakonda, Key Club president and senior, one of the primary reasons for creating the initiative was to help the incoming 2020-2021 freshman class become familiar with all of the clubs at the school.

Regarding the freshmen, Devarakonda said, “A lot of freshmen don’t really know what they are doing because there’s so many different clubs available specifically to CHS, and they are kind of overwhelmed, so, by creating a centralized list of all

of the volunteering opportunities, we hope to help them out.”

In addition to centralizing volunteering hours, this new initiative aims to help smaller service clubs gain exposure and more members.

Devarakonda said, “(The smaller clubs) don’t have a lot of membership… we want to take all of these clubs and promote their activities so it is open to more than just the 10 or 20 people in their organization. Key Club is a great way to do that because we have around 200- 250 members.”

This initiative came from a project current Key Club members and alumni created the summer of 2018 through expanding on the Butler Way Leadership Camp.

Devarakonda said, “We had to come up with a solution to a problem within CHS and me, the past president, the past vice president and current outreach director chose this.”

According to Zainab Idrees, Key Club member and sophomore, Serve Carmel will also help Key Club members meet their hours, as they are required to have 20 group hours and 20 individual hours for the school year.

Idrees said, “I think this initiative will help me get to my required hours easier by providing more opportunities to serve and get connected within my community.”

While there is not yet an official roster of clubs participating in the new initiative alongside Key Club, they are already working with UNICEF Club on the trick-or-treat fundraising boxes and aims to do similar projects like this one with other clubs in the future.