I'm writing this review of the Dinuba club because I've been in contact with Ramon through our…read morecurrent Lt. Gov, Brett Barnes. Ramon had previously served as Lt. Gov of Division 18 a few years ago and is a member of the Dinuba Kiwanis Club. The Dinuba club meets at Me & Martha's Restaurant on Tulare St.
My gripe with Ramon is that it seems members are treated differently based on how the organization views them and/or their past contributions. Got a daughter going to college and you've been a Lt. Gov. in the CNH District? Fine. Reach out to a Division outside of your own just to get your daughter housing. It will even be shared with the club you reached out to(Davis). Reaching out to your own club for help after walking across the U.S. to mark their 100th anniversary, fundraise on their project to save lives against a dreaded disease and as a membership drive, all while dealing with a global pandemic that not only threatens the health of your most supportive loved ones while grappling with the possibility that you might lose your membership simply because you're unable to pay due to said pandemic affecting your access to resources after you already reached out to those in your District after apologizing to them and promised to get help and was still in the process of getting help after nearly losing housing while taking care of an ill family member with no other social support network to reach out to? Too bad- Kiwanis won't keep it's promise to me. If they did or had told me of plans to, I wouldn't be writing this review today. Maybe they plan to & I'm just not aware of it. Maybe it got lost in the mail, or like in the case with my interactions with International HQ in Indiana, I've just been lied to this whole time. I've included email correspondence I received from Ramon, which was forwarded by Brett.
It is strange that someone who served as Lt. Gov and someone who walked across the U.S. for an effort to help the organization get new members of a difficult time for many and fundraised to save many lives around the world can get so much vastly different treatment. If we were treated equally, either we would both be turned down or we would both get help. Yet one of us received help while the other didn't. Guess who got which?
It doesn't seem like Kiwanis is interested in getting membership. Out of some of the biggest service organizations, Kiwanis is doing much worse, and with the pandemic ongoing, we are doing even worse. Most organizations are probably in the same boat. Yet it seems my contributions, both the national walk, and efforts now to help membership, don't seem to be of any value. I can only conclude the organization does not want to help itself, and members like me who received promises of help in the past have no intention of getting those fulfilled. Kiwanis just leaves empty promises and only few people get help if they're deemed worthy enough, like being a Lt. Gov within the organization like Ramon. If it's something you contributed as a non-officer, the organization doesn't care, even though the last time Kiwanis had a gain in membership after 1992 was in 2018. In the last 30 years, membership was always lower than the previous years before that, so out of the last 30 years, percentage-wise, we've lost membership annually 97% of the time. In both of those years above, shortly prior to them, two people did national walks to bring awareness to Kiwanis or an initiative at the time. I was one of them.
If Kiwanis doesn't acknowledge the contributions of non-officer members, then the organization will only continue to decline. Ever more so than before the COVID pandemic. This is probably the same for many chapters within Kiwanis, and maybe even most large service organizations, but it looks especially problematic from my experiences in the CNH District. You can read my review of the CNH District here: https://www.yelp.com/biz/cal-nev-ha-district-of-kiwanis-rancho-cucamonga
