Elizabeth Smart and Redmond Mayor Marchione help Youth Eastside Services raise more than $520,000 at annual breakfast
Published 11:16 am Tuesday, March 20, 2012
On March 13, the 2012 Youth Eastside Services (YES) Invest in Youth Breakfast raised more money than the annual event ever has to help young people on the Eastside and their families.
With the help of keynote speaker Elizabeth Smart and City of Redmond Mayor John Marchione, who also spoke at the event, guests donated more than $520,000 to the youth services organization.
“We are overwhelmed by the amazing community support,” said YES Executive Director Patti Skelton-McGougan. “To have a place where all kids and their families can come for help is a key to a healthy community.”
YES specializes in treating youth facing issues such as substance abuse, depression, physical or sexual abuse, suicidal thinking and more. No one is turned away for inability to pay, thanks to the support of donors at the breakfast.
The breakfast featured Smart, an abduction survivor, who shared her story of overcoming adversity.
“My mother gave me the best advice I could have received,” Smart said as she shared how she moved beyond her kidnapping. “She told me that while I could not get back my nine months of captivity, I could choose not to give my captor another day.”
Smart (above center with, from left, Skelton-McGougan and Connie Thompson of KOMO 4 News) is now an ABC News correspondent, founder of a charity that helps prevent predatory crimes against children and less than a month ago, she got married.
Also featured was a young man and YES client named Gabe, who shared his story about how he was taken from his alcoholic mother at 2 due to neglect. He stayed briefly with his grandparents who also lost custody due to neglect and anger issues. His father abused him and then returned him back to state custody when Gabe was 5. Eventually, his aunt took him in and Gabe found love and support.
He later found YES to help with the anger and abandonment issues that resulted from his tumultuous childhood. Like Smart, Gabe overcame his adversity, has graduated from high school and is starting an internship.
A group of young women from a local high school also shared their stories of living with alcoholic- and drug-addicted parents. They discussed how they had been abandoned by their parents because their addictions were more important. Some of the young women lived in cars, garages and storage units and some have even taken younger siblings to work because their parents didn’t return home for days at a time.
The girls credit an “affected others” group, which YES runs at their school, for helping them overcome the obstacles in their lives. The 11 girls are graduating and many will be going to college next year.
Following the client speakers, Marchione took the stage.
“There are a lot of ways you can spend or give away your money. But to me, there is no better way than to invest in youth — to make sure every child can be successful no matter what challenges come up in life,” Marchione said.
All money raised at the breakfast benefits the YES Lifeline Fund, which supports uncompensated care as well as underfunded prevention programs. YES saw a jump of 24.3 percent in the cost of uncompensated care in 2011. In the past five years, the agency has provided $1.2 million in uncompensated care.
“Kids are coming to us with more severe problems and require more intensive therapy than we have seen in the past,” said Skelton-McGougan.
Donations are still being accepted at YouthEastsideServices.org.
