Civic organizations continue to grow, prosper
Page 4 • Wednesday, August 27, 2014 • The Hammonton Gazette
CIVIC, from Page 1
where a younger generation can be more
concerned with themselves than a large
group, while parents are increasingly occupied with their children’s activities.
All of these factors have led to civic organizational representatives seeking ways to
continue to attract people to perform good
service. Some acknowledge Hammonton is
different regarding clubs, but in a positive
way because of its close-knit community atmosphere. Membership in civic clubs is
growing locally in opposition to the national
trend.
Kiwanis in Hammonton has increased its
efforts to recruit younger members into the
club. individuals such as longtime Kiwanis
member Bob Schenk have been a part of a
committee to acquire new members.
Schenk’s pitch about Kiwanis has been the
service group’s involvement with the youth
of the community and world.
to continue to keep current members interested and persuade new ones to join, Kiwanis is featuring a program of interest each
week, as a member of another organization
will come in to speak about a certain topic.
According to Schenk, seven new members
have joined the civic organization in recent
weeks.
“We get people interested in working with
children, and if you like working with children and the kids of our town, that is the first
pitch we give to others. We do a lot of different projects, scholarships, we have a Little
League team, and we organize the
Halloween parade, Christmas party
for the underprivileged in town and
much more.
“We meet at Maplewood each
tuesday and we have a dinner meeting. the food is good and we have
good fellowship. We just have a lot
of activities to keep people interested in. We are involved with the
[Hammonton High School] Key
Club…We are trying to get people
involved in the community, young
business people and anybody of interest in being in a service club,”
Schenk said.
the Kiwanis Club is currently
working on revitalizing the pavilion
and bandstand at Hammonton Lake
Park.
Schenk said the economy has
been a factor with clubs such as Kiwanis because of the cost to be a
member, but the membership leaders are very liberal in regards to attending meetings.
“the cost of the meal at Maplewood is reasonable, and we try to
keep it reasonable to become a
member of the club and we are liberal on attendance. if you can, come
as many times as you can and be involved in an x-amount of things,
then we are happy of it. there is not
a set number of attendance days required, like it was in the past,”
Schenk said.
With both parents working fulltime jobs and balancing activities
their kids are involved with, retaining or having members join civic
groups has become a tougher task.
“there is less time that they [potential members] can devote to service clubs. that is another reason
why we are liberal with attendance,
compared to years ago. People have
a lot of things going on in the
evenings, so we don’t require everyone to come once a week,” Schenk
said.
Schenk doesn’t believe Hammonton is different than any other community regarding clubs. He said it
comes down to how much time
civic organizations want to