MOSES LAKE - About a dozen Moses Lake High School students gave up one of their afternoons last week to spend a couple of hours cleaning up a section of their town.

Members of the school's Key Club, the high school arm of the Kiwanis organization, picked up trash along state Route 17 Wednesday. They covered about two miles, from where the highway meets Interstate 90 to the Basic American Foods plant, Brooke Frederick, the group's advisor, said.

The highway cleanup is something the group has done for the past few years. It's a way for the kids to help spruce up the area and to raise money for a good cause, he said.

"Each time we do the cleanup the Key Club chooses a charity they want to donate to," said Frederick. "We haven't decided where we want to give the money to this time, but in the past they've chosen the Ronald McDonald House and North Elementary's summer food backpack program."

The club receives cleanup funds from the Dano Law Firm.

"They've adopted that part of the highway and that's something they've always done is let different groups in need of funds come in and clean it up," he said. "

Frederick said the Key Club currently has about 80 members, although in some years they have had up to 120.

"It's always a good size group," he said. "They all help out the school and the community when they can."

The highway cleanup is just one of the many activities the club does each year, said Frederick.

They're getting ready to run a blood drive at the high school in about a week before shifting their focus to the school's Halloween night event in October, for example, he said.

"We're connected with the Kiwanis Club and Kiwanis is about service," said Frederick. "That's basically what the Key Club is too, we're based on service."

Key Club is a student-run organization with more than 260,000 members between its about 5,000 clubs.

They are headquartered in Indiana, but represented in 31 countries, according to the group's website.

Each Key Club member is expected to perform at least 50 service hours per year.