Now that it’s March, spring is in sight. On one of the first nights of the new season, you’re invited to a tropical-themed celebration on behalf of Concord International Elementary – here’s the announcement:

Join us March 22nd for our annual dinner party and auction—an evening of great food, drinks, live music, and live and silent auctions supporting the Concord International Elementary PTA in one of the coolest neighborhoods in Seattle — South Park!

All proceeds go toward the support of educational programs for children at Concord Elementary, a high-poverty school in our neighborhood.

Treat yourself to an evening of fun while helping to provide high-quality educational opportunities to children in South Park. See you there!

The event starts at 7 pm at South Park Hall (1253 S. Cloverdale). Your ticket is available here.

Back on Saturday, we showed you volunteers from Tibbetts United Methodist Church (WSB sponsor) getting ready to take a truckload of donated furnishings and other items to a family exiting homelessness to permanent housing South King County. The organization that Tibbetts worked with, Mary’s Place, shared photos of what happened next. Above and below, the volunteers arrived at the location and got everything unloaded.

Later, the delighted family was there – including this little girl:

They had this message for the volunteers/donors:

If you’re interested, here’s more about the Mary’s Place program through which Tibbetts helped this family:

When a family experiencing homelessness enters a Mary’s Place shelter, they often have only a few possessions with them. Many of their belongings, including dishes, knickknacks, lamps, even treasured family photos, are left behind.

Families don’t always get to choose where they live, and while moving into a new house is an exciting step forward, ensuring that families feel supported by the community, and helping to make their new house feel like a home is integral to long-term success. By providing basic furniture items for a family in their new apartment, groups can stand beside these families and welcome them home!

Groups are asked to provide a minimum of a sofa, beds, and a dining room table and chairs. Other items, like lamps, coffee table, kitchen essentials, sheets/blankets, television, art/decorations, toys, etc. are always appreciated!

Mary’s Place can provide the family connection, the group collects, stores, and delivers the items to the family. For more info, contact Irina Pastushok at 458-202-9686 or irina@marysplaceseattle.org.

At right is On Safari Foods proprietor Teresa Carew, with Judi Yazzolino of the West Seattle Food Bank, who reports that On Safari just gave WSFB’s Backpack Program a big boost, by raising $10,000 to support it. The fundraiser was part of On Safari’s annual Open House this past Thursday night in SODO (where the catering company moved eight years ago after outgrowing its West Seattle HQ). Judi says WSFB is grateful to Teresa, her crew, and “very generous guests” for their support. According to On Safari, the money was raised through a combination of cash donations at the door, a raffle, and a silent auction. The company already supports the Food Bank by donating leftover food. Now it’s given a big assist to the Backpack Program, which sends six “kid-friendly, nutritious, non-perishable, easy to prepare and eat” meals home every weekend with students in need.

P.S. You can support the Food Bank by attending another big event coming up in SODO – its annual Instruments of Change dinner/auction on May 11th.

(Photos provided by WestSide Baby, showing their White Center HQ)

The snow has affected us all in a variety of ways … especially people in need and the nonprofits who serve them. Here are two ways you can help one local nonprofit, WestSide Baby, get back up to speed:

WestSide Baby provides essential items to local families in need. We have been closed for 6 days in the past two weeks. This means volunteers, staff (mostly) and donations have not been able to get to us. At the same time, the children and families we serve are also experiencing this horrendous weather, shut in time, lost wages and the diapers continue to be needed! (Letter from Executive Director Nancy Woodland here.)

Please consider sending diapers to help the families inevitably hit hard by lost wages or donate $$ now and we will do that for you.

And please volunteer to help us fill orders for families!

Thursday: Valentine’s Day/Night Out February 14 11 am-8 pm
Saturday: Special additional hours 1-4 pm
Monday: Presidents Day 10-1 (possibly longer if interest)

Please email Volunteer@Westsidebaby.org if you are interested. It’s also super helpful if you fill out this application. If you are sending minors age 14-17, without an adult, they need to fill out a Minor Consent Form.

Although parking on the street is still a bit of a challenge (4×4 vehicles fine), we have shoveled out the parking lot; we invite anyone 9-99 yrs old who wants to volunteer to come!

Volunteer work is at WS Baby’s White Center HQ, 10002 14th Avenue SW.

As we’ve shown you before – the West Seattle Food Bank is also a book bank! And more books are needed – maybe you can take some over before the next storm, or perhaps you can spend some time sorting through yours while you’re indoors this weekend. From Judi Yazzolino at WSFB:

The West Seattle Food Bank’s Bookcase Program is in need of all kinds of gently used books, especially for children ages 5 years old and younger. Our Bookcase Program is growing tremendously, having distributed over 11,000 adult and children books thanks to generous donations from individuals and business in our community. Our clients are very appreciative of the program, where they can take home up to 10 books to keep.

Donation hours are Monday-Friday 9 am – 3 pm and we are located at 3419 SW Morgan St. on the corner of 35th & Morgan. Enter through our garage on Morgan and come in through the double doors. Our volunteers will be glad to help you with your donation. Thank you so much.

(Photos courtesy Judi Yazzolino)

As promised, we have an update on Saturday’s big food-drive kickoff, courtesy of West Seattle Food Bank development director Judi Yazzolino, with a reminder that more donations are welcome:

The West Seattle Food Bank would like to thank Northwest Harvest for setting up the kickoff of their statewide Food Drive with Safeway & Albertsons at the Admiral Safeway on Saturday, and Seahawks Wide Receiver Doug Baldwin and former Seahawks Cliff Avril & Richard Sherman for coming to support and offer autographs and pictures to those who donated food.

Everyone had so much fun and we collected over 1,700 pounds of food & $125, half of which came to the West Seattle Food Bank, and half went with the US Coast Guard, whose representatives were extremely helpful in helping load it all into the vans. Thank you to everyone who put this event together, who came and donated food and especially to Doug, Cliff, & Richard for giving us your time and support!

This food drive was set up to help all of the furloughed federal employees, contractors, and other business owners and employees affected by the government shutdown. We also want to be sure and help those individuals that we serve who received their food stamps two weeks early on January 20th and may be running low by next week. There are West Seattle Food Bank barrels at the Admiral Safeway by checkout where you can continue to donate to help those in need.

The store is at 2622 California SW.

(WSB photo from promotional pre-plunge event at Alki earlier this month)

February 9th is now less than two weeks away, and we’re learning more about the all-day celebration that’ll be centered on The Big Plunge at Alki. As originally announced by Special Olympics of Washington, it’s a fundraiser and an attempt to set a world record, so the more plungers, the better. This isn’t a run-in-run-out five-minute event, either; it’s set for 10 am-3 pm Saturday, February 9th, and now there is also a plan for a food/beer festival that’s open to all, not just plungers. The day promises a beer garden, food trucks, DJs (listed here), “winter beach games,” even heated changing tents. Here’s how to register for the Plunge.

Though the federal shutdown is ending – at least temporarily – it’s still left a big and growing need for food donations, and that’s the reason a statewide food drive is kicking off tomorrow. Safeway and Albertsons stores statewide will have bins for Northwest Harvest; Admiral Safeway will host a kickoff event noon-4 pm tomorrow (Saturday), with Doug Baldwin from the Seattle Seahawks visiting at 1 pm. Donations will benefit local food banks; for Admiral Safeway, that’s West Seattle Food Bank, whose development director Judi Yazzolino explains, “Even though the government shutdown is over we will still be overwhelmed with need because everyone with SNAP benefits got them 2 weeks early and won’t get them again until Feb. 1st.” All are welcome to the event at Admiral Safeway (2622 California SW).

(U.S. Coast Guard photo – aerial view of Seattle base)

From the WSB inbox – in case you haven’t already heard of this way to help local U.S. Coast Guard personnel as the shutdown continues, we were asked to publish this:

Seattle! Our local United States Coast Guard families are affected by the current federal shutdown. Please consider donating if you can.

Seattle Area CPOA in conjunction with CGEA, CWOA and PSOA have opened a Food Pantry located in the CPO Mess 3rd deck of Building 7. It is open to all AD CG, Reserve on AD, CG Civilians affected by the shutdown.

Hours are M-F 1100 – 1400.

Anyone wishing to help [can do so] by donating non-perishable items or toiletries to the front gate. If you can access the base, the OOD will take donations or you can bring them to the pantry.

Anyone wishing to send a check, it will be used to buy grocery gift cards; send it to:

Coast Guard CPOA
C/O US Coast Guard Base
1519 Alaskan Way So.
Seattle, WA 98134

Other ways to help… Consider donating to USONW online at usonw.org. Click on the DONATE tab then scroll down to Coast Guard. There is a dollar for dollar match for all money contributed up to $50k! All money contributed there will go to grants for Pacific NW CG personnel. Thank you so much for your consideration on helping our families!

While other servicemembers are not affected, the USCG is because it’s under the Department of Homeland Security rather than the Department of Defense. Here’s the map to its Seattle base, toward the south end of the downtown waterfront, so it’s not far from here.