Serving youth has been a part of the lives of James Rhodes and Cole Christian for many years. Now students at Iowa State, they want to continue their work while giving other students the same chance they had.

Optimist International is an organization that focuses on helping youth be successful all around the world. The organization started in Buffalo, N.Y. in 1911 and has made its way to the Iowa State University campus.

“I was a charter member of the JOY club in my hometown, which is junior optimist, and rose to president of that and secretary treasurer of the district, so I’ve been around and been experienced with it,” said Rhodes, a finance student at ISU and president of the Iowa State University Optimist Club.

This experience led Rhodes to attend an Optimist International Convention last year in Cincinnati where he approached multiple people about the possibility of starting an Iowa State University branch.

“I feel like giving people the opportunity to succeed is better than trying to take care of them later on. I think if you start them young and get them a better opportunity, it helps them more than trying to get them when they’re down and trying to bring them back up,” said Rhodes.

Cole Christian, a member of the board of directors of Optimist Club at Iowa State said his motivation was rooted in his work with Optimist back home and the fact the he enjoyed helping youth.

“I would like to see us bring a connection between elementary age kids in the Ames community and Iowa State students,” said Christian.

In the more than 100 years that Optimist has been an organization, it has seen its scope of service continue to grow. On a per year basis, Optimist International has more than 65,000 service projects and spends more than $78 million and serves 6 million youth directly. The events vary from educating youth about the Internet, to putting on a ten-day junior golf program and various other activities.

In the past, Rhodes has used club funds to buy backpacks and fill them with toys and books to give to emergency crew vehicles. When a child was involved in a domestic dispute or a fire that the crew responded to, they could pull them aside and give them the backpack to try and keep their mind off of things, said Rhodes.

Iowa State University’s branch of Optimist is the largest start-up Optimist Club in the nation this year, said Christian. He said having a large amount of members allows for a lot to get done.

“With a lot of members it’s possible to do stuff over breaks. We wouldn’t have to start and stop all the time,” said Christian.

Although Optimist has been around since the early 20^th century, Rhodes says that the club is still relatively unknown.

“One of my main goals was to stop the question of ‘what is Optimist?’ I want everybody to know what it is by the time we get up and running,” he said.

Another goal that Rhodes has for the organization is to partner with organizations such as United Way and the Boys & Girls Club to expand their reach.

“We can help them by providing membership and bodies to help do stuff and it would give us the opportunity to get out and do things that we wouldn’t normally have the opportunity to do,” said Rhodes.

Students who want to get involved in Optimist Club at Iowa State may have to wait awhile to start helping with events, however. Christian stated that there probably isn’t enough time for the club to put on any service events this semester but there will be a charter banquet to celebrate the new club. When events to begin to take place, Christian has a good feeling.

“I feel like we can make a huge impact,” he said.