Circle K International (CKI) is a member of the Kiwanis Family, dedicated to community-service and bettering the world around them. CKI is the largest collegiate service organization in the world with more than 320 college and university campuses in 17 nations and 6,600 student members worldwide. Clubs are organized and sponsored by a Kiwanis Club on a college or university campus. CKI is a self-governing organization and elects its own officers, conducts its own meetings, and determines its own service activities. CKI blends community service and leadership training with the opportunity to meet other college students around the world.
CKI began in 1936 at Washington State University in the Pacific Northwest District. It was a Kiwanis Club service project to provide an opportunity for capable, ambitious, and worthy young men to acquire a college education by assisting them through a scholarship fund or securing part-time employment. The Circle K Club as we know it today was started in 1947 at Carthage College in the Illinois-Eastern Iowa District. The Pennsylvania District was founded in 1962 and the first club was at the University of Pittsburgh-Johnstown in 1957.
Our Tenets: Service, Leadership, and Fellowship
Our Motto: Live to Serve, Love to Serve
Our Mission: Developing college and university students into a global network of responsible citizens and leaders with a lifelong commitment to service.
Our Vision: To be the leading global community-service organization on college and university campuses that enriches the world one member, one child and one community at a time. Tenets The tenets of Circle K International are serve, leadership and fellowship.
Our Pledge: I pledge to uphold the Objects of Circle K International, to foster compassion and goodwill toward others through service and leadership, to develop my abilities and the abilities of all people and to dedicate myself to the realization of humanity’s potential.
Our Objectives:
• To emphasize the advantages of the democratic way of life;
• To provide the opportunity for leadership training in service;
• To serve on the campus and in the community;
• To cooperate with the administrative officers of the educational institutions of which the clubs are a part;
• To encourage participation in group activities;
• To promote good fellowship and high scholarship;
• To develop aggressive citizenship and the spirit of service for improvement of all human relationships;
• To afford useful training in the social graces and personality development; and
• To encourage and promote the following ideals:
▪ To give primacy to the human and spiritual rather than to the material values of life;
▪ To encourage the daily living of the Golden Rule in all human relationships;
▪ To promote the adoption and the application of high social, business and professional standards;
▪ To develop, by precept and example, a more intelligent, aggressive and serviceable citizenship;
▪ To provide through Circle K clubs a practical means to form enduring friendships, to render altruistic service and to build better communities; and
▪ To cooperate in creating and maintaining that sound public opinion and high idealism, which make possible the increase of righteousness, justice, patriotism and goodwill.