A fundraising banquet Saturday to help a group of student ambassadors travel to Japan this summer found some serious community support.<\/p>\n
The banquet, the Kent-Auburn-Tamba Sister Cities Committee\u2019s annual blowout, raised roughly $13,000, according to organizers.<\/p>\n
Those are dollars that will help to send a group of seven teenagers to Japan, as part of KAT\u2019s student-ambassador program, as well as supporting KAT programs.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re up a little better from last year,\u201d said Kim Isom, president of the committee and an organizer of Saturday\u2019s event.<\/p>\n
Isom said between 140 and 150 people attended the banquet at Green River College\u2019s Lindbloom Center in Auburn.<\/p>\n
They were treated to a sit-down dinner, as well as a silent auction and a jam-packed catalog of items for a bidding auction.<\/p>\n
The merchandise was as diverse as cell phones and samurai books to Dominican Republic vacations, hot-air balloon rides \u2013 even an African safari.<\/p>\n
Diners also got into fierce bidding wars for the items on the dessert table, too.<\/p>\n
Isom said this year\u2019s event saw a bit of change from those in the past.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis year we really stepped it up,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
Instead of a buffet line there was a sit-down dinner and a formal atmosphere in their new venue at GRCC.<\/p>\n
The audience also got some authentic Japanese entertainment.<\/p>\n
Seattle Matsuri Taiko, a drum-performing group from Seattle Buddhist Church, came onto the stage and pounded its way through a half-hour of vigorous numbers. The troupe is composed of musicians aged 13 and up, and had the distinction of performing at the Dala Lama\u2019s Seeds of Compassion visit last year in Seattle.<\/p>\n
Organizers also made a point of directing the audience\u2019s attention on the reason they were there: to support the group of seven teens who will represent their communities to the Japanese sister city of Tamba.<\/p>\n
Those students are: (Kent) Celena Hansen, Meridian Middle School, and Cameron Scotland, Kentridge High School; (Auburn) Javon Chow, Reed Guisinger, Will Schwindt, Colton Johnson (all of Auburn Riverside High School); and Dillon Hurley, Auburn Mountainview High School.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A fundraising banquet Saturday to help a group of student ambassadors travel to Japan this summer found some serious community support. The banquet, the Kent-Auburn-Tamba Sister Cities Committee\u2019s annual blowout, raised roughly $13,000, according to organizers. Those are dollars that will help to send a group of seven teenagers to Japan, as part of KAT\u2019s […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":217,"featured_media":8529,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-8528","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-life"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8528"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/217"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8528"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8528\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8529"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8528"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8528"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8528"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=8528"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}