About Kiwanis
Make a meaningful contribution outside the office. Network and make new friends. Improve your community and make life more fulfilling for others.
Every year, the business world becomes a little more impersonal. Rewarding business relationships become more and more crucial to success – both personally and professionally.
The Kiwanis Motto is “WE BUILD” – better communities, relationships with youth, much needed programs for children, and, in so doing, we inevitably better ourselves. Projects are initiated and developed by members as the need and opportunities arise. The Kiwanis Club of Toronto represents many kinds of professions and entrepreneurs, who have over the years, become leaders in professional, business, educational and financial organizations. Lifetime friendships have been formed based upon mutual interests and a shared joy that comes from doing great things for others.
Building on 87 years of service to the downtown Toronto community, we continue to extend a welcome to members of our community to join us as we build a better life for us all in Toronto. Kiwanis clubs serve their communities while providing members with an opportunity for personal growth. Members contribute their enthusiasm, time, and fund-raising efforts to community projects.
The Kiwanis Motto – “Serving the Children of the World”
Over 300, 000 men and women from around the world have found that Kiwanis provides business networking opportunities and the friends to make life a more fulfilling experience. Today there are some 10,000 Kiwanians, drawn from all walks of life in Canada and about 8,500 Clubs around the world.
The first Kiwanis Club was organized in 1915 with the aim of community involvement and service. In 1916 and 1917, the Kiwanis Clubs of Hamilton and Toronto were chartered.
 |
| The Kiwanis Club of Toronto partnered with Staples to provide school supplies for children in Regent Park. |
Kiwanis is a worldwide service organization having a keen sense of responsibility toward their communities, countries and people everywhere. They know that as a group they can achieve far more than as individuals working alone.
Each Kiwanis Club has a mandate to impact its own community; as well as the opportunity to engage in coordinated global initiatives such as the completed World Wide Service Project to eliminate Iodine Deficiency Disorders in partnership with UNICEF.
The goals and objectives of the Kiwanis has remained constant for the last 85 years, and as the organization developed and the world changed, the opportunities to provide service have diversified also.
- 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 higher social, business, and professional standards
- To develop, by precept and example, a more intelligent, aggressive, and serviceable citizenship
- To provide, through Kiwanis Clubs, a practical means to form enduring friendships, to render altruistic service, and to build better communities
- To cooperate in creating and maintaining that sound public opinion and high idealism which make possible the increase of righteousness, justice, patriotism and good will
The Kiwanis Music Festival
The Toronto Music Festival was founded in 1944 by Col. George W. Peacock of the Salvation Army and a member of the Kiwanis Club of Toronto. He was so impressed with a festival that he attended in Winnipeg, that he brought the idea home and established it here. It was an immediate success and has since been held every year.
Today’s Kiwanis Music Festival is collectively sponsored by 14 Kiwanis clubs in the Greater Toronto Area. There are over 500 areas of competition, including piano, choral, vocal bands, orchestras, ensembles, solo instruments, and even speech arts and drama.
There are now over 3,000 Festival entries each year, involving over 32,000 participants. Twenty halls are required to stage the various competitions, and over $40,000 in scholarship money is awarded.
For more information on The Kiwanis Music Festival, please visit kiwanismusictoronto.org
Click here to view thank you letters from past award winners from the Kiwanis Music Festival.