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‘It’s been a great experience for me. I’ve learned lots’

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Published on Friday, February 12, 2016

Photo by Kira Paterson. Amanda Naughton-Gale is currently serving a term as Kin Canada’s District 2 Governor.

By Kira Paterson

Neepawa Banner/Neepawa Press

Neepawa’s Kin Club has a friend in high places to represent the community, along with the entire District 2, which consists of northwest Ontario and all of ˮ����Ƶ. Amanda Naughton-Gale is a member of the Neepawa Kin Club as well as Kin Canada’s District 2 Governor.

“Basically I build a team of people that can help me throughout the year,” Naughton-Gale explained. “We try to be the liaison between national and the club.” Being the connection between the two, Naughton-Gale makes sure that the clubs know what’s going on nationally and that Kin Canada knows what’s going on in the community clubs. “What Kin clubs or Kinette clubs or Kinsmen clubs do across the country are very specific to those communities. Here in ˮ����Ƶ and northwestern Ontario, we have 45 clubs and each club does something different based on what their community wants or needs.”

Another part of her job as district governor is to help prepare the vice-governor for his term as governor next year by involving him in what she does. Together, they help the district clubs with things like recruiting and membership and help them sort through issues if there are problems within the club. “We’re really there as very much a hands-on support network for clubs to make sure that they’re running at their best and that they’re meeting their community’s greatest needs,” she explained. Naughton-Gale has been a member of the Kin Club since 2004 and has been serving a one-year term as District Governor since July of 2015.

“[Kin is] actually Canada’s only Canadian service organization and basically, we come together to serve the community’s greatest needs, which is our motto,” said Naughton-Gale. She said that Kin clubs are very much like the Lions or the Rotary clubs that help the community and its people. 

There are many things that the Neepawa Kin Club does continually. “We give out a bursary at NACI every year,” she said. “We help out NACTV, or we help out the 4-H club, we’re the sponsoring organization for the Boy Scouts. Pretty much any sort of community based request that we get in, we look at and agree to help out in some sort of way.” They also have big projects that they focus on that benefit the community. “In the past, Kinsmen Kourts is a great way of showing some of the things that Kin has done in the community. We’ve raised money for palliative care, we’ve raised money for the hospital, there’s all sorts of little parks around with playground equipment that have Kin’s name on it as well.” Now the club is looking at doing another large project that they hope to start making progress on soon. “We announced a couple of years ago that we would like to explore the possibility of building a splash park here in Neepawa and we really still want to pursue that,” Naughton-Gale continued. “Our major difficulty in pursuing that is not having enough members to help us out. We’re a very small club here in Neepawa and so we really encourage anybody who is wanting to do some volunteering to come out and see what we’re about and possibly help us with a fundraiser or two to start getting that ball rolling.”

Kin Canada also supports different national causes and does projects as a national association. Coming up on Feb. 20 is the club’s Founder’s Day, which is the anniversary of the first club meeting. During the week of Founder’s Day, the clubs across Canada will be doing random acts of kindness in their communities. Neepawa’s club will be around town performing random acts of kindness from Feb. 15 to 20. 

The association also supports Canadian Blood Services by committing to donate at least 500 pints of blood every year. Kin has been supporting Cystic Fibrosis Canada for about 40 years, raising over $50 million so far for the organization. “We’ve seen great strides that have happened within cystic fibrosis,” said Naughton-Gale. “The average lifespan of a CFer was 18, if they got to 18. Now it’s way past into 35 to 40.” They also have a Kin Canada Foundation, which has raised money for the 49th Parallel North Fund that goes towards military and first responder families. 

Naughton-Gale stressed that members of Kin clubs not only give, but they get a lot out of it as well. “It’s been a great experience for me. I’ve learned lots,” she said. “You learn how to run good meetings, you learn how to event plan, you learn how to fundraise, you get a little bit of an ear to the ground to the community to know what’s going on and you make a difference in the place that you live.” She continued, “Volunteering in a service organization is a huge opportunity for people to increase their personal development skills, to add to their resume, to have a sense of pride in their community and to put something back into where they’re living. So it’s a great opportunity for anybody... So I would greatly suggest to people to think that being part of a service organization is really an investment in your own personal life and in your career.”

She encourages anyone interested in the club to give her a call or come out to one of the meetings. The Neepawa Kin Club meets in the boardroom of Kinsmen Kourts, 299 Davidson Street, on the first and third Wednesday of every month at 7 pm.