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With help from BBRC members assembling the menu and a cooking/serving crew performing Bon Appetite, the Bellevue Breakfast Rotary Club took its turn as hosts for the Saturday evening dinner at the Rotary Homeless Youth facility at Sand Point. Community Service Committee Chairperson Susan Harrison said exuberantly, “We had a fabulous time serving dinner to the kids. They looked to be around 16-18, mostly guys, a few girls. They were so nice, polite, sweet, and humble. As each was being served, you could ask them what item they wanted and for a moment they each seemed like any one’s teenage kid. Shy and sweet. It was touching. We all agreed that it was a fabulous thing to do.”
Harrison said that “the University YMCA needs Rotary support becaus, on Saturday nights, the only medical van of three in the nation comes to serve. They discovered that the kids are less likely to ask for medical help unless food is served at the same location. This is the only food distribution of its kind in the U District, and it combines medical care as well, which makes it critical to protect. The van goes to other areas the rest of the week. It's sponsored by Street Links.”
The servers included Mary Truesdell, Paul and Susan Martin, Sadru Kabani, Harrison, and Mary's teenage daughter and her friend. Rotarians who paid for the food (which, incidentally, cost $120) included Scott Sadler, Paul Martin, Carol Hoeft, Scott Hildebrandt, Kelly Dykstra, Tim Moriarty, Jan Nestler, and Rourke O’Brien, and Susan’s mom, Marylane Harrison, on the brownies! Said Susan, “All in all, a really good group of people made it happen.
Heidi Shepard, Director of the RHYC, came to show the BBRC group around and introduce them to the staff. Susan has become active on the Homeless Youth Board of Directors and is spearheading lining up other Rotary Clubs to host the Saturday dinner. “So far my letters to 5030 club presidents have yielded six club sign-ups in one week to commit to four times a quarter. The Bellevue Breakfast team (listed above) volunteered to host the times when no other clubs have signed up. I'm so proud of them. Wow!”
Comments from the Team: "It was eye opening." Paul Martin talked about what a good project it was and that it meets the criteria for why we exist as a club. Very worthwhile. He would like to see more club members rotating serving the dinner, in order to have more members involved. Sadru Kabani said, “It was a very good thing that we were doing. We loved it. We realized what a really great thing we had provided and experienced. “
Finally, Susan wants the BBRC to understand that “if some group doesn’t come to prepare and serve this meal, then one staff person goes over to Second Harvest to pick up whatever they have that day and the kids get what ever it was. Not much to look forward to, so this program needs more thought put into how we can serve these kids better.”
Kudos to Susan “Fireball” Harrison, Mary Truesdell, Paul and Susan Martin, and Sadru Kabani, and to the others who ponied up the resources to make the meal possible. This shouldn’t be a tough call. There are 51 Rotary Clubs in District 5030. Seems like there are 52 weeks in a year – what about that, Fireball?
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