Back in October, as part of their annual “Harvest For the Community” fundraiser, the members of the Kent Sunrise Rotary Club selected Communities in Schools as their “Fund-a-cause” selection.
During the live auction, members were asked to raise their paddles at various donation levels to help collect money directly for Communities in Schools.
“It’s like a raffle,” club president Fergus Prestbye said in a phone interview last week.
Dec. 9 at the Kent School Board meeting, the Rotary delivered a check for $10,000.
“It’s an activity in the community we thought was deserving of our financial support,” Prestbye said.
Calling the donation “a pretty good chunk of change” and “the fun part” of the job, Prestbye said the Rotary Club announced the recipient in advance of the auction, adding that anytime the Rotary can raise such a large quantity of money, they like to donate it to groups they feel can use it to do the most good.
Communities in Schools operates in seven Kent schools, according to its Web site, providing service to more than 3,880 students through programs such as its Elementary Mentoring Program and the Kent Performance Learning Center at the Kent Phoenix Academy.
In the 2008-2009 school year, Communities in Schools also put 11,000 books into the hands of Kent elementary students through a partnership with Reading Tree, as well as mentoring 61 elementary school students and 13 students at the Phoenix Academy.
In the past, Sunrise Rotary has conducted “fund-a-cause” to donate to Children’s Therapy Center as well as Kent Youth and Family Services.
Prestbye said Sunrise Rotary collected $30,000 during the October event, which this year was held at the ShoWare Center. The remaining money will go into a club account to go to community and international projects over the next six months.
Prestbye said along with the check for Communities in Schools, $1,000 has already been donated to the Kent Police Department and an additional $2,200 was donated to the Children’s Therapy Center to purchase windows for its building on Kent-Kangley Road and to the Relay For Life.
Prestbye said the Sunrise Rotary club has only about 30 members making the size of the donations even more impressive.
“It absolutely is a remarkable thing,” he said.
For more information about Communities in Schools Kent visit http://www.kent.ciswa.org/
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