Key Club is one of many clubs at Bellevue West, a club that many may not know about, or what they do.
As a club, it offers many different service opportunities. Some of the previous opportunities were making the blankets for the Bellevue Pediatric Intensive Care Unit. The blankets were used to provide comfort for the children who were flown in on helicopters or who were driven in on ambulances without any comforting items from home.
Bellevue West isn’t the only school with a Key Club, as it’s an international organization of people across the country, along with across the globe, who are wanting to help out their community.
“That community can be Bellevue West, Bellevue, the Greater Omaha area. They’re people who want to volunteer,” club sponsor Amy Smith said. “They want to help. They just want to make their community better.”
Key Club meets every other Thursday at 3:05 p.m. Each meeting lasts about half an hour to 40 minutes, depending on the project being worked on. They meet in room 147, Smith’s classroom.
Smith said that Key Club is a great opportunity for a kid to get involved, even if it’s just to hang out and have snacks every other Thursday.
“I have really great students who are part of the club,” Smith said. “They’re a blast. It’s fun. I mean, we come together every other week, We eat snacks. We do, like, silly games, or do silly things for that. But at the end of the day, we’re doing things that, when you leave, you feel like, okay, we did something.”
Smith has been a sponsor for Key Club for three years and that she took over the role as adviser because she cares for the club, and the students involved with it.
“That’s just something that I cared about as a personal value; helping others as much as we can,” Smith said. “And so it felt like a natural fit.”
Senior Erin Roque is the club’s current president. She said she was introduced to the club through her sister, a previous attendee of Key Club.
“One day, she was just like, ‘do you want to come to a meeting?’,” Roque said. “And I was like, ‘Sure.’ I believe it was my sophomore year, October. And then I just showed up one day, and just stayed, because I liked it.”
Some projects the club has completed in the past are Thanksgiving baskets, and many different kinds of donations to many different organizations; like the Bellevue Food Pantry.
“I absolutely love doing the Thanksgiving turkey baskets,” Roque said. “So the whole school is available, they have the freedom to enter a contest. It’s just, it’s super fun seeing the creativity that the school puts effort in. And along with that, it also gets to be donated for good use.”
The club itself helps make other people feel cared about, whether it be through kind notes, or donations and projects.
“It was Valentine’s Day when we blasted the cafeteria for the first time,” Smith said. “The staff’s response was like, ‘nobody had ever done that before,’ and so they were just like, ‘oh, people actually care about this,’ right? And the janitor said a similar response to getting something that showed that kids care, not just adults doing it, but that kids cared about them.”
The club may be under noticed, but still is full of passion by its attendees.
“Everyone who goes to the club wants to be there, you know?” Roque said. “So just like knowing that everyone is there to have fun. Like, it’s stress free, and we just do fun little projects. It’s a good de-stress for the end of the school day.”
