Community Volunteer Awards
2023 Honoree
Kiwanis Club of Rancho Cordova
Distinguished Community Service Organization
Kiwanis Club of Rancho Cordova
One of Rancho Cordova’s most steadfast civic organizations celebrated a 50th birthday in 2022. It was a reminder to pause and consider how enduring service by volunteers has quietly shaped our community into a caring place over the last five decades.
In 2022, the Kiwanis Club of Rancho Cordova marked their Golden Anniversary of service to the children and the community it calls home. Their mission “to improve the world one child, and one community, at a time” is shared by hundreds of thousands of Kiwanians around the world, and especially in Rancho Cordova.
Rancho Cordova Kiwanians are generous with their time, creative with their ideas, passionate about making a difference, and determined to have fun along the way. A visit to an early Thursday morning meeting of Rancho Cordova Kiwanis Club is truly a trip down the rabbit hole.
Kiwanians have championed many projects over the years, including memorable years running the Rancho Cordova Fourth of July Parade and serving up pancakes to volunteers at the California Capital Air Show. They are always working behind the scenes making Rancho Cordova a better place to live.
In recent years they have focused on a signature project called the Book Buddies Family Literacy Project, which puts free books into the hands of local children and youth, while encouraging family literacy activities at home. Since 2020, Rancho Cordova Kiwanis Club has placed more than 4,000 books into young peoples’ hands. They expect to give out an additional 2,000 books by June of this year.
They are using technology to tackle literacy goals and their website will soon feature locally produced videos about how to read aloud to children, and how to run a family book club at home. They have many supporters in this, including the City of Rancho Cordova Community Enhancement and Investment Fund, the Kiwanis Children’s Fund, former Assemblyman Ken Cooley, MERO Pictures and TruColor Lithographics. But at the heart of it all beats the heart of Kiwanis.
Kiwanian efforts are so woven into the activities of the community, it sometimes is almost invisible. For example, they are the local bartending go-to organization, and have performed this service everywhere from the Fourth of July to the Airshow to the Sports Hall of Fame to the Community Volunteer Awards. They would normally be manning the bar tonight, but in honor of this award, we gave them the night off.
Rancho Cordova Kiwanians are the people grilling hot dogs at Kids Day and the Rancho Cordova PAL Junior Giants end of season celebration. Ask a former Mills Middle School student who enjoyed a pancake breakfast during their final day of promotional celebration if they enjoyed their Kiwanis dining experience.
They sponsor the Key Clubs at Cordova and Rosemont High Schools, as well as the Circle K Club at Folsom Lake Community College. Inspiring and encouraging young people to engage in community service is a mainstay of the organization, both internationally and here at home. They offer scholarships to high school seniors from Rancho Cordova who have demonstrated a commitment to service. They are developing a new program with PAL to engage their Youth Leadership Council in a book club reading books that feature youth in leadership roles and actions.
Kiwanians know they cannot achieve their mission alone. So they build partnerships with many organizations and individuals. Kiwanis Club collaborations with schools, local government, the faith community, other nonprofit organizations, law enforcement, businesses and other funding partners, makes their work possible -- and more fun.
Kiwanis Club President Ashley Hill reminded us that Margaret Meade famously said, “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.”
Rancho Cordova Kiwanis Club, you have proved the truth of that observation. Congratulations on a half-century of invaluable and fun-loving service to the people of Rancho Cordova as the 2023 Distinguished Community Service Organization.
