The Key Club is an international club sponsored by Kiwanis International. Key Club’s purpose is to help children in high schools around the world assist in doing community service. The High school members of Key Club perform acts of community service from many different lengths. Some of the things they do include doing food drives for different organizations, clothing drives, running meetings to spread awareness, and much more. The Key Club saying is “Children: Their Future, Our Focus,”. In addition to community service, Key Club recently sold pies to raise money for the Integrated prom.

The Key Club here at Bernards High is run by a group of students. Ms. Camuto is the advisor, Madison Paulik (‘17) is the President, Nicole McClosky (‘17) are the Vice Presidents, and Danielle Vandenherik (‘17) is the secretary. The members meet on Wednesdays before and or after school. Most recently, the Key Club had a drive for an organization called Pennies For Patients. The members of key club walked around during lunch and collected money from students to donate to the cause. Pennies For Patients is an organization that collects money for the The Leukemia & Lymphoma Society. Besides raising money, Pennies for Patients also encourages students to learn and spread awareness about childhood leukemia and lymphoma. Since 1994, millions of dollars have been raised in pennies and other spare change around the world by elementary, middle, and high schools. Pennies for Patient’s mission is to “cure leukemia, lymphoma, Hodgkin’s disease and myeloma, and improve the quality of life of patients and their families”. The money donated goes towards research, helping patients get access to affordable treatment, and helping all patients live their life the happiest they possibly can.

Children that suffer from Leukemia suffer from the most common cancer in children and teens, accounting for almost 1 out of 3 cancers. Leukemia is cancer of the white blood cells. Abnormal white blood cells form in the patient’s bone marrow and travel faster through the bloodstream than healthy cells, causing an extremely high chance of infection when exposed to any germs. There are many different types of childhood Leukemia but every kind is harmful to the children in many different ways. Once a child is diagnosed with Leukemia, it is difficult to live a normal, fun filled, childhood. Lymphoma is the name for a group of blood cancers that develop in the lymphatic system. The two main types are Hodgkin lymphoma and non-Hodgkin lymphoma. The first type is a disease that causes large cancerous cells to grow in the lymphoid tissues. The other kind is a group of similar lymphoma diseases that are distinguished by the characteristics of the cancer cells associated with each disease type.

The Bernards Key Club collected money during lunches, and also went to Starbucks on December 12th from nine am to twelve pm to collect money from people in town. Ms. Camuto was there with the rotating group of students who came to stay for different amounts of time. Many people donated large sums of money like ten and twenty dollar bills! Ultimately, Key Club raised a little over $425 including the money collected during lunch!