LIHU‘E — The look on “Joe’s” face made the entire holiday season for Zonta Club of Kaua‘i volunteers last year. Joe (due to privacy issues his name has been changed) was blown away when Zonta members delivered him his Christmas
LIHU‘E — The look on “Joe’s” face made the entire holiday season for Zonta Club of Kaua‘i volunteers last year.
Joe (due to privacy issues his name has been changed) was blown away when Zonta members delivered him his Christmas wish, a new wheelchair, after a reader saw Joe’s story in The Garden Island after both she and her sister had unbeknownst to each other purchased wheelchairs for their mother.
The reader sold the brand-new chair to the club at half its purchased price, and that gift keeps on giving, as Kaua‘i Adult Day Health Center participants share the chair as needed.
Year after year, Lynn Kubota of Pono Market makes and donates quilts for needy Kauaians, not for any recognition but simply because she enjoys quilting and the joy the gifts bring to recipients.
In 2009, club President Melinda Uohara decided to put together an album of the thank-you cards and other forms of appreciation that Zonta has received from grateful Kauaians, and this year Anne Barnes continues that work, said Yoshiko “Dimples” Kano, chair of The Garden Island/Zonta Christmas Fund.
“These are all the thanks we need to keep us motivated in continuing the fund,” she wrote in her 2009 final report.
“The joy expressed by the recipients, which in turn is felt by the social workers (of various agencies the Zonta members work with to identify needy Kauaians), and the feeling of satisfaction by the donors, all add up to the joys of the holiday season, making this such a worthwhile annual project,” Kano said in her 2008 final report.
Over the past three years, 2007 to 2009, club members collected over $48,000, and between 2005 and 2009 nearly $92,000 was donated, mostly by local donors in small amounts.
Club members were happy to report that, despite the economic downturn, donations in 2008 were nearly $20,000, and last year over $17,000, after a five-year low of just over $12,000 in 2007.
“In spite of our economic climate, those who donated (in 2009) were quite generous,” Kano said in a letter to Nathan Eagle, managing editor of The Garden Island.
“The recipients of the Christmas fund are truly grateful and their social workers’ reward is to see their smiles when presented with their gift cards,” she said in the letter.
Clients of the county Agency on Elderly Affairs, Alu Like, Inc., state Department of Health, Easter Seals, Child & Family Service, Kaua‘i Economic Opportunity, Hale Kipa and YWCA are among the regular recipients of gift cards to make some of their holiday wishes come true.
