Sequim-Dungeness Kiwanis Club meeting

When: 5:30 p.m., Tuesday, Dec. 8 (second/fourth Tuesday monthly)

Where: Mariner Cafe, 609 W. Washington St.

More info: Call club president Philomena Lund at 477-4742 .

A new wave of Kiwanians are working to fill any and all community cracks left behind after the Sequim-Dungeness Kiwanis Club dissolved more than two years ago.

“All of us come to Kiwanis with a big love of children,” Philomena Lund, Sequim-Dungeness Kiwanis Club president, said.

Not only do the members of the renewed club each share a passion to serve and support their community with an emphasis on youth, but each brings years, some decades, of previous Kiwanis experience.

Kiwanis clubs aimed at “improving the world one child and one community at a time,” Lund said, are found in individual communities nationwide. However, each club is part of a bigger network operating under the umbrella of Kiwanis International with clubs located in 80 nations. Annually, members stage about 150,000 service projects and raise nearly $100 million for communities, families and projects.

Kiwanis clubs embody and aim to foster “fun, friendship, leadership, service, educational programs, networking, personal growth and recognition,” Wayne Boden, Sequim-Dungeness Kiwanis Club member, said. “It’s building leaders for tomorrow … that’s what it’s all about.”

At the heart of the revitalized Sequim-Dungeness Kiwanis Club are three couples that recently moved to Sequim and were brought together by their desire get a local club back in operation.

“I was amazed that the club here had gone away,” Jack Gourlie, Sequim-Dungeness Kiwanis Club membership chairman, said.

Gourlie moved to Sequim from Port Townsend where he was involved with the Port Townsend Kiwanis Club and before that involved with Kiwanis in the Seattle area, equating to more than 30 years as a Kiwanian.

When longtime Kiwanians Mary and Wayne Boden moved to Sequim from Anchorage, Alaska, last June they too were “shocked” to find that there was no active club in Sequim, as were Philomena and Ted Lund who moved to Sequim five months ago from Spokane.

Since July the new club members have worked to reorganize, elect officers and most recently reach out to other people in the community likely to have an understanding of potential community needs, Lund said. Already, they’ve met with personnel with the Boys & Girls Clubs of the Olympic Peninsula, Sequim School District, Shipley Center, a literacy group, the Rotary Club of Sequim, the Museum and Arts Center and the City of Sequim.

In speaking with Joe Irvin, City of Sequim parks manager, the Sequim Little League fields became an area of interest for the Kiwanis club to get involved in after discovering that “it’s pretty much up to the parents and coaches to prepare the fields,” Lund said.

To help ensure the quality of the field and ability for children to readily play, members of the Sequim-Dungeness Kiwanis Club are collaborating with city officials to help spearhead field maintenance and a spring clean-up event.

Additionally, Kiwanis members plan to utilize the existing partnership between Kiwanis International and the publishing company Scholastic to distribute books to local children, as well as volunteer with the Sequim Food Bank.

The Bodens, representing the Sequim-Dungeness Kiwanis Club, recently worked with other Kiwanis clubs to plant trees at Camp Beausite Northwest — a camp originally opened by the Sequim-Dungeness Kiwanis Club in 1989. Located in Chimacum, the camp continues to provide camping experiences to adults and children with disabilities.

Although the club’s initial community projects are beginning to take shape, all its members are eager to help other community-centric organizations, too, Mary Boden said.

“Hopefully, we can foster some communication between the other groups, like Rotary and the Lions clubs,” Lund said. “We’d like to work side by side, collaborate to benefit the whole North Olympic Peninsula and make sure the different needs are being met.”

Having focused their energy first toward getting organized, members of the Sequim-Dungeness Kiwanis Club have reached a turning point and are beginning to grow their membership.

“We’re open to anyone,” Lund said. “We try to do things in the community so nobody feels they’re tackling the world on their own and hopefully give the kids of the community a sense that there’s a whole group that will go to bat for them.”

Anyone interested in learning more about Kiwanis is welcome to attend the club’s bimonthly meetings or contact Gourlie, at 360-302-1371.