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Kiwanis Club of DeAnza

5403 Stevens Creek Boulevard
408-255-3693

The members of DeAnza Kiwanis Club, serving Cupertino and Saratoga, mark Kiwanis International's 91st birthday during Kiwanis Anniversary Week, January 15-21, 2006, according to Bill Menafra, president of the Kiwanis Club of DeAnza.

The club celebrates during their regular weekly meeting on Friday, January 20th, 7:15am at International House of Pancakes (IHOP) on Steven’s Creek Road in Santa Clara. The guest speaker for this meeting will be Kate McNichols, who is the Community Liason Manager for Hospice of the Valley.

The first Kiwanis club was chartered on January 21, 1915, in Detroit, Michigan. Today,Kiwanis has grown to number 8,250 clubs and 280,000 members in 94 countries around the world. Kiwanis clubs sponsor community service projects and raise funds to meet local needs.

The Kiwanis Club of DeAnza was chartered in 1975. Local Kiwanis service projectsinclude the Annual Kiwanis Special Games for challenged youth, holiday events for seniors at the Saratoga Senior Center and volunteer support for the ADA Tour de Cure. The club also sponsors three youth community service organizations, the DeAnza College Circle K, the Lynbrook High School Key Club and the Miller Builders Club.

Last year, Kiwanis clubs around the world raised and spent more than $100 million on community service activities, with a special emphasis on meeting the needs of young children. Kiwanis members also donated almost 6 million volunteer hours to these service activities. This money and time supported almost 150,000 Kiwanis projects to meet community needs.

Kiwanis International’s continuing service focus is called “Young Children: Priority One.” Under this theme, each Kiwanis club is encouraged to sponsor significant projects that serve the special needs of young children from prenatal development to age 5.

Kiwanis clubs around the world are also conducting the first Kiwanis Worldwide Service Project in partnership with the United Nations Children’s Fund. Kiwanis has raised more than $75 million to assist nations in eliminating iodine deficiency disorders (IDD), the leading preventable cause of mental retardation in the world today.

As Kiwanis International marks its 91st anniversary, Kiwanis funds are now at work in almost 100 nations, and UNICEF estimates that Kiwanis-funded IDD programs are protecting more than 75 million newborn children from diminished mental skills each year.