MERIDIAN TOWNSHIP - To honor Flag Day on June 14, the Kiwanis Club of Haslett-Okemos and other community volunteers put up multiple American flags throughout the community.

The Kiwanis Club is an international club of volunteers that help the community and the children within it, by doing this the Kiwanis club helps to improve the world. In 2018 the Haslett-Okemos Kiwanis Club was created when they agreed to merge.

Kiwanis Club was founded in 1915 in Detroit, Michigan, and eventually became an international club a year later with the founding of the Kiwanis Club of Hamilton Ontario, Canada. Then in the 1960s, the worldwide expansion of the club was approved. Their current motto is “Serving the children of the world.”

With this motto in mind, the Kiwanis Club has done numerous fundraising, donations, and projects. Some of these projects include the $6,000 annual donation to the Haslett Robotics Club, $75,000 to the Youth Sports Pavilion at the Marketplace on Green, and Okemos At-Risk Youth Summer Camp Sponsorship. In addition, the Kiwanis of Michigan Foundation also makes donations to Children’s Hospitals in Michigan.

All of this was made possible through the annual fundraiser Flags Over Meridian. Bob Scott, acting president and director of Flags Over Meridian says, “1,000 flags are put across Haslett-Okemos and it takes six different teams of community volunteers to put them up.”

They put the flags up for six different holidays. These holidays include Memorial Day, Flag Day, Independence Day, Labor Day, Patriots Day, and Veterans Day.

Scott continues to say, “The community loves having the flags up! People wave and say thank you as they pass by.”

He also emphasizes the importance of seeing the flags all around the community, “The flag is still a symbol of unity.”