About Us
The Biscayne Bay Kiwanis Club (BBKC) is an all-volunteer service organization of professional men and women based in Downtown Miami that improves the lives of disadvantaged children in Overtown, Allapattah, and Midtown Miami through educational programs, field trips, and hands-on service projects.
With a membership as diverse and vibrant as the Miami community it serves, our organization is versatile, providing opportunities each month to participate in service projects that address a wide variety of community needs.
Since 1950, Biscayne Bay Kiwanis—one of the preeminent service organizations in South Florida—has changed lives and brightened the futures of thousands of children by bringing Kiwanis’ programs to our community. As an all-volunteer, non-profit 501 (c) (3) organization, all monies raised by the BBKC are put back into the community; our members cover all administrative costs.
Biscayne Bay Kiwanis regularly provides resources and volunteers to more than a dozen partner schools in our service area for reading projects, presentations
on careers, etiquette, civics, and life skills, school events, talent shows, class trips, and more (see Get Involved). We also supply uniforms and backpacks for the neediest students, support for garden projects, and equipment and books for media centers. Kiwanis incentive programs in our partner schools encourage regular attendance and academic achievement. For instance, the Bring Up Grades (BUG) program is crucially important because it recognizes, rewards, and encourages students who do not make the Principal’s List but who do improve their performance from one grading period to the next.
In addition, our organization plays an instrumental role in furthering the education of the students in our service area—and thus creating a lasting impact on our community—through a variety of college scholarships, including the annual awarding of a full college scholarship to a deserving Booker T. Washington High School senior. Over the past nine years, the Biscayne Bay Kiwanis has awarded more than $300,000 in college scholarships.
But while Kiwanis’ focus is on improving the lives of children, our club does other good work in our service area.
Our annual Thanksgiving Project provides a turkey with all the trimmings and an entire week’s worth of food to nearly 200 needy inner-city families identified by the principals at our partner schools. We regularly serve meals to the homeless and provide activities and field trips for families living in shelters.
We also serve disabled adults in our community by providing activities, holiday parties, and day trips, including an annual outing to Zoo Miami. It has been our holiday tradition for many years to provide all the presents on the wish-list of every
resident of the United Community Options (formerly United Cerebral Palsy) facility near the University of Miami’s medical campus.
If you would like the opportunity to give and back alongside new friends—who could become lifelong friends—while making Miami a better place, join Biscayne Bay Kiwanis.