My name is Joel Hogle, and I am part of the youth philanthropy program at the Community Foundation called Kosciusko Endowment Youth Services, or KEYS. I would like to tell you about a good group of students who are doing good things in our community.
KEYS includes 20 students, eighth-graders through 12th-graders from Lakeland Christian Academy, Tippecanoe Valley, Warsaw and Wawasee. We meet monthly through the school year, conducting activities to grow as philanthropists, caring about our community. We do community service projects, the building of the KEYS endowment, and grant making.
I've been involved in KEYS for four years, and during this school year I held the position of Community Service Committee chairperson. I led KEYS in a community service project with senior citizens from Grace Village. For this project, KEYS members and seniors all read the book "The Ultimate Gift," and then discussed the impact the book had on all of us. We thank Grace Village for their help in this project.
KEYS students met their partnered senior citizens in February and played a special bingo game created by us to get to know each other. It was amazing to walk around the room and hear conversations, ranging from future plans to college basketball. The response after this initial meeting was amazingly positive. All the KEYS members made a connection with their partners through the discussions they had. It was quite superb to see that we, the youth of this county, have the ability to converse with others from a completely different generation.
In May after we all read the book, we got together to discuss the book. This book focuses on the teaching of many life lessons, to a younger very spoiled man. He receives lessons ranging from the gift of work to the gift of laughter, and in the end he learns important life lessons. We came excited to see our friends again and anticipating great conversation after reading such a moving book. We enjoyed lunch together while we talked about how we experienced the book.
I was involved in an engaging conversation about life and what we learned from "The Ultimate Gift." In the end, I think everyone involved in this project was impacted in a positive way. All the KEYS members became friends with their partners; some are still in contact with them. It was an enthralling moment when I realized how much I learned from the discussion I had. Sometimes it is common for youth to be completely out of contact with some of the wisest, most knowledgeable people in our society, the elderly. The senior citizens and the KEYS students all learned from each other. This was a good project involving good people, and I thought the community would like to know about it.
Joel Hogle
Wawasee High School KEYS member, Syracuse, via e-mail
