All You Can Eat Pasta Helps Send Kids to Camp Kiwanis

Pick a sauce, any sauce.

Meat, vodka, tomato, they're all here. Add a meatball if you want, with a side of salad. Treat yourself to some dessert. Whatever combination your meal takes, what's important is that it helps the kids.

The  Key Club teamed up with the East Meadow Kiwanis Club to hold Pasta Night at the school on May 13. For $7, folks enjoyed all-you-can-eat pasta, bread, salad and dessert. The best part: all proceeds raised go to help send kids to Kamp Kiwanis upstate, as the East Meadow chapter sponsors a week in August.

Pasta Night is really the result of hard work by the Key Club, whose mission is community service. There are certainly future Kiwanis members in their ranks, but for now, it's all about helping the kids during their time at Clarke.

"My members, and I know everybody who comes has a great time," Key Club President Gina Principato, a Clarke sophomore, said. "It just makes everybody feel so good knowing we're raising money to help someone who needs the money to go to camp."

"When we can work with our young groups, [like] Key Club, that really is what gives us the most pleasure, because we get to work with them, this is actually their function," Kiwanis President-Elect Mitchell Allen said.

Money is also raised through raffles, with local businesses like and donating prizes. The biggest donation of all was the food, with the likes of , and A Taste of Home providing the night's eats.

Future Key Club members helped out as well, as the 'K-Kids' were on hand to serve and keep younger kids occupied while their parents grabbed a bite. The K-Kids are from , and get satisfaction knowing they can help those less fortunate than them.

"It's important because [there are] people that can't afford things that we can, so I like helping people," K-Kid Julianne Hallett said.

Last year, the dinner raised over $2,000. What about this year's carb-fueled fest?

"We're trying as hard as we can to top that," Principato said.