What do you call three awe-some days of leadership, fellowship and service with 100 of your friends? InterPACK 2009! This year at InterPACK we achieved higher levels of service with our first district large-scale service project for the boy scouts at Camp Hidden Valley in Loysville, PA. Attendees were separated into teams and then pulled together to revamp and remodel facilities for the Boy Scouts. Different projects such as rearranging cabins, landscaping trails, cleaning and painting amounted to nearly 500 hours of service! That’s what I call a success.
The theme of “Expedition: Service” took the PACK’s annual fall leadership retreat in a new direction this year. The focus was put on educating members about CKI’s many service partners; what they do, and how each Circle K club can get involved. The second part of the service aspect was accomplished by participating in a large-scale project, the remodeling of the Boy Scout camp. But even with hundreds of hours of service being done, there was still plenty of fun to be had. Attendees had the chance to pie district officers in the face, mingle during some mellow service projects indoors, enjoy a delicious home-style Thanksgiving dinner with their teams, and get down to some sweet beats at the dance.
Prior to InterPACK weekend, PA Circle K participated in a district wide Food & Clothing drive to benefit our district service project, Helping the Homeless. We ended up donating 1,648 items to various food banks and home-less shelters across the state. Way to go PACK! The club that donated the most items won a $25 gift certificate, and with 551 items the winning club was Penn State University Park! Many schools have decided to keep collecting items to donate. It is a great way to benefit the DSP and it’s really easy to do. Think of how much we could donate by the end of the year! At Inter-PACK, we used 75 yards of fleece to make eighteen blan-kets for the homeless, and five yards worth of scarves. Each club took a few blankets at the end of the weekend to give to their local shel-ters. Circle K’ers also made 130 peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, which were served at the Harrisburg Homeless Mission the next day. Overall, the PACK completed 200 service hours towards the DSP.
The weekend closed with some superlatives for those members that particularly made an impression including Most Passionate, Leader of the PACK, and of course, Mr. & Mrs. InterPACK. Ultimately with 111 people in attendance and 500 hours of community ser-vice, InterPACK 2009 was a huge success. Thank you to everyone’s hard work in putting this retreat together, and to all those in attendance I hope you had fun and realize how much of a difference you have made! And whether you did or did not attend, look for something even more imaginative next year!
