Circle K's potential lies in its ability to positively influence those in our society who are meeting personal challenges and those who will one day create the vision of mankind for generations to come. Circle K members are the embodiment of those qualities necessary to shape the future.
The vision of Circle K International is dedicated to the realization of mankind's potential.
CKI is truly an international organization with over 10,000 members from approximately 500 clubs in 12 countries. It is also a part of a much larger organization: Kiwanis International. KI is a worldwide service organization composed of civic leaders who have the desire to become personally involved in making their communities better places to live. Kiwanis Clubs sponsor Builders Clubs in junior high schools, Key Clubs in high schools, and Circle K Clubs in colleges and universities. Through the sponsored youth committee, these Kiwanis Clubs offer advice, manpower assistance, and financial support to their younger counterparts. Together, Kiwanis, Builders Club, Key CLub, and CKI make up the K-Family.
A Circle K'er is so inexperienced that he can't solve a sticky problem by sitting in an air-conditioned office and drifting off into the cool atmosphere of abstract thought. He has put his shoulder to the wheel and his hand in God's hand and prays like a lost sinner while he totes the barges and lifts the bales.
You can't recognize a Circle K'er just by looking at him. To the underprivileged child at Christmas, he looks like Santa Claus. To the lost, bewildered freshman at registration, he looks like the Good Samaritan and his Father Confessor. To the thousands who see him sweating under the Spring sun to get the vote tallied, he looks like Uncle Sam in a limp shirt. To the harassed, over-worked Scout Executive, he looks like the Scout Oath personified. To a worried university administrator, he is an army of help or a leader unafraid to soil his hands with the clean shirt of hard work.
And even if you know a Circle K'er today, you won't know him tomorrow. Today, in order to stay in school, he may be an obscure, part-time clerk; but, after a while as a Circle K'er, after becoming aware of getting into the bloodstream of civil affairs, he'll graduate and soon will be hiring and firing clerks by the dozen. But meanwhile, he'll spend time on committees or stand on the street corner telling people where to vote or run around on cold nights working on some kind of project and listen and be concerned. And he'll start getting public recognition that is not actively sought. People he doesn't know from Adam will call him by name on the street; he'll be on speaking terms with hundreds he never knew before; his professors and fellow citizens and classmates will be turning to him for leadership; and he'll be lucky if his best girl thinks enough of him (or his wife loves him enough) not to gripe like the dickens because he doesn't spend enough time with her.
But his real reward will be the comfortable realization that he is doing things that build communities and states and nations. He can say with solemn pride that, while others stayed in the background, he came forward and threw down the gauntlet to the problems and injustices that hung over his campus and community. He can say that while others followed the crowd, he followed his conscience and that he was working to keep every dot and dash in the Constitution while others were concerned only with putting photos in the campus yearbook or putting dollars in the ledger. While some merely moaned "We have a problem, what will we do?", he was ready to step in. While others just pointed at the dirt, he was swinging a broom.