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Foundation Committee Chairperson Rick Klobucher presents Hopelink Executive Director Dorene Marchione with the final
payment on a 3-year obligation pledging $60,000 to the organization.
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In ceremonies Friday morning, Dorene Marchione, Executive Director of Hopelink, accepted the final check of a three-year commitment by the Bellevue
Breakfast Rotary Club Rick Klobucher, Chairperson of the BBRC Foundation Committee, explained that the Club has completed the obligation made when it pledged $60,000 over three
years – $22,000 in each of the first two years and $16,000 as a final payment. This was the first time the BBRC had extended its major grant over more than a one-year period.
Marchione said the forerunner of Hopelink, the Multi-Service Centers, was founded in 1971 when the Boeing slowdown created a need for
services to families needing help. A job service and food bank was set up in Woodinville, which proved to be the origins of the MSC. “For 29 years
, we’ve grown to serve nearly 2,000 families through our food banks, in an area from I-90 to the Snohomish County line and from the eastern shore of Lake Washington to the Cascade Crest.”
“As the organization grew in the recent past, our board and other citizens felt a need for a new name that didn’t sound like a tax-supported agency.
Last year, we searched for a new name and settled on Hopelink, which reflects one of our major missions – to bring hope to families in need. The
administration office is in Redmond, with family centers in Kirkland, Bellevue, Northshore (Bothell), Redmond, and Sno-Valley center in
Carnation. We will soon be handling the food bank in the Shoreline area.”
Marchione outlined other services offered by Hopelink. Financial assistance, a family emergency shelter in Kenmore, 32 units of transitional
housing, addiction prevention, family development services, and running the transportation dispatch for access vans from the Bellevue Center.
The BBRC’s contribution has created a Learning Center in the Bellevue office, where all kinds of activities are held. Cooking classes, Rotacare
clinic, parenting classes, and other meetings of importance to the organization and the families it serves. There is no question that the BBRC and Hopelink have a love affair going, what withBBRC member
Shelley Noble serving as Director of Social Services for Hopelink and and Chuck Barnes and Jeff Cashman serving as volunteer members of the
Hopelink board. As long as Hopelink continues to require choral music at all their functions, with words and music by Howard Johnson, perhaps there will be more togetherness in the future.
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