The Kiwanis Club of Grand Cayman held their sixth annual Key Leader event October 19^th through 21^st at the St. Ignatius campus. 44 students turned out ensuring the weekend-long event was again a great success! The students, including five from Cayman Brac, were both male and female and ranged in age from 14 to 18. Nine past Key Leader attendees were also on hand as Student Facilitators, guiding their assigned “neighborhood” and allowing for their own personal growth.

The Key Leader program is designed to help teenagers develop leadership skills. The program is run annually in Cayman and is open to all teenagers who want to attend. Participants are taught the five principals of service leadership: personal integrity, personal growth, respect for yourself and others, building community and the pursuit of excellence.

This year the Kiwanis Club brought down Scott Johnson from North Carolina as Lead Facilitator who leads several Key Leader programs throughout the US each year representing Kiwanis International.  Assisting Scott in the capacity of Site Coordinator was local Kiwanis President, Kadi Merren.

Ms. Merren quoted “This is the second year I’ve been involved with this amazing leadership program and it was the best one yet!  After the event I received countless messages about how much the students enjoyed and benefited from the weekend and some informed me that they would be back every year!  I could see the positive change in students over the three day program and I’m so grateful to the sponsors and those that provided a generous discount or volunteered their time to help us run the program successfully.  It was so rewarding to read the thank you notes that the students wrote.  I think that Key Leader is something that every high school student should experience and I’m looking forward to another successful program next year!”

Each year the event is offered to interested students for only a $25 commitment fee, through the generous sponsorship of the Cayman business community. Our 2012 event would not have been possible without the help of our major sponsor, RBC Wealth Management and Dart Cayman Islands along with left-over funding from last year’s corporate sponsors.  We would like to give a special thank you those sponsors who have been loyal to us since Key Leader began; Saint Ignatius School for allowing us to host the event on their campus, Reliable Industries for donating their cleaning services throughout the weekend and the Security Centre for providing security guards each night.

We would also like to thank Andy’s Rent-a-Car for providing a vehicle and Comfort Suites for providing discounted accommodation for the Lead Facilitator and the CI Cadet Corp for donating sleeping cots.  A special thanks also goes to JLM Foods who has provided discounted meals for the past 6 years and Mise en Place who also provided discounted meals this year.

For more information on the Kiwanis Club and its projects visit their website www.kiwanis.ky or email the President, Kadi Merren, at [email protected].