West Fargo High School takes home Gold at District Key Club District Leadership Convention

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Bailey Aanenson, Freelance writed

St. Cloud MN April 19th-West Fargo Key Club had the opportunity to go to the District Leadership Convention (DCON) this weekend and was able to not only learn different fundraising opportunities for both their school as well as their community, but they were also able to bring home the most awards West Fargo Key Club has ever received. They competed against over 250 Key Clubbers from North Dakota, South Dakota, and Minnesota.

The club brought home a total of thirteen awards to their school which included:  Distinguished President, won by Logan Helm, Distinguished Vice President, won by NaTya Arndt, Distinguished Secretary, won by Bailey Joy Aanenson, Distinguished Publicist, won by Kelly Tran, Second Place Single Service, Third place Point Forms, First place Monthly Report forms, K-Family Award, Eliminate Award, First Place Video, First place Nontraditional Scrapbook, First Place Digital Poster, and Third Place Oratory. The club is also going to be able to run in the International Conference in June with their First place winnings of Video, Nontraditional Scrapbook, and Digital Poster.

About Key Club

Key club is an international student led volunteer organization that is located 35 countries including the recently added nation of China. Key Club has 270,000 members worldwide in about 5,300 clubs. These clubs work to improve their own communities as well as impacting the world through Key Clubs global charities such as March of Dimes, Children’s Miracle Network and UNICEF’s Eliminate project.

Locally West Fargo High School’s club has been working this year with a multitude of projects ranging from the ice bucket challenge to volunteering at the children’s science museum. While West Fargo has a smaller club with 23 members they placed third in total club points and volunteered about 500 hours this year alone.

In order win many of this awards students had to create professional presentations or portfolios to present at DCON. For all of the distinguished officer’s awards the officer team had to create binders that summarized their service to the club in the last year. The Single Service award was a written out plan that was implemented in their schools to raise money and awareness for a cause. This year the students planned a wooden rose sale on Valentine’s Day to raise money for the Eliminate Project which raises money to end Neonatal Tetanus, a preventable disease that kills infants and mothers in several third world countries. They also received awards for monthly reporting forms and points forms for keeping accurate records throughout the year. The K-family award was given for the joint projects this club did with other clubs in their region. The Eliminate patch was given for raising money for the Eliminate Project.  The Digital Poster, Non-Traditional Scrapbook, and the video contest were given for creating Key Club promotional materials and were judged on their explanation of different categories. Finally, the oratory award was given for a speech made by Gift Ben-Bernard with the topic “What will Key Club look like in the next 10 years”.  All students were presented with their awards during the Governor’s Ball and closing ceremony.