Key Club Wins Video Contest at DECON
Caitlin Connell
STAFF WRITER
Key Club at Andover High School won an award for creating a promotional video for Key Club International. On April 9th and 10th the club traveled to Springfield, for the District Educational Conference for Key Club, also known as DECON.
Key Club Co-Presidents Isabelle Galgano, Dia Arora, and club Vice President Mara Duran-Clarke
Key Club is “a community service club that just tries to spread kindness and build community within our school and outside it,” says Co-president Dia Arora. Club Co-President Isabelle Galgano instated the club her freshman year. She says she “wanted to find something that was representative of what I was passionate about” and started Key Club because she wanted to “bring something to the school.”
The Key Clubs in the surrounding area make up the division and those divisions form the New England and Bermuda District of Key Club. There were contests held at the conference and Galgano says that the club is “really creative and so we wanted to go for one of those awards, and so we made a Key Club promotional video and submitted it to the contest and we actually won first place.” This video will be sent to the international Key Club convention to be considered for that event. Vice President of the club Mara Duran-Clark also won an award for Outstanding Vice President. Galgano was elected as the district secretary for the New England and Bermuda district of Key Club, and won an award.
Key Club has done many services for the community, one being the food drives they do with the Lazarus House like the one they did last year for Thanksgiving. They received over 700 cans of food. Key Club is also doing another food drive with the Lazarus house for the spring to be “our final hoorah… to kind of end off our good year,” Galgano said.
COURTESY PHOTO / Isabelle Galgano
Co-President Isabelle Galgano wins award for District Attorney at DECON
In the past, Key Club also ran a COVID-19 relief drive for India and received over 1,000 items. Arora says this was a “big project for them”. The kinds of products that were sent to India were “masks, hand sanitizer, tissues… a variety of items they might have had a shortage of during COVID times.”
Another project Key Club worked on locally was writing affirmations to “brighten people’s day.” Arora said. The affirmations were attached to lollipops which the club members handed out after school to students. This small act of kindness was enough to make a lasting impact on someone’s day and is a nice act of community service to help out the community at AHS.
Key Club strives to be more than a community service club; it is also a place to make friendships and build a community of their own. Galgano says, “I think our biggest thing is trying to be inclusive and our emphasis is on having a place in the school where people can feel comfortable going and a group of people where these are my friends but also working together to achieve our passion of service and helping others.” The club has become an outlet to not only help and serve those in need in Andover, but also a place to make friends and enjoy helping the community at the same time.
