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Community Corner

Local Officials, Volunteers Honored at MLK Center Annual Dinner Dance

Event also raised money for the Center, which provides various programs for the community.

When 17-year-old twins Cullen and Jana Soares turned seven years old, they realized that they did not always enjoy the gifts they had gotten for their past birthdays. So instead they asked their friends and relatives to donate items to a charity of the twins’ choice in lieu of giving them birthday presents.

“For our birthday parties in the past we just got a lot of gifts and we didn’t really all appreciate them anyways so instead (our parents) said we’ll get you what you want, (and) instead you can ask your friends to bring donations so we could give it to someone else  to help people who are less fortunate, which made total sense to us,” Cullen said.

The two have been doing this every birthday since then, and last year contacted the Martin Luther King Multi-Purpose Center in Spring Valley to find out what they could do to help. They found out the Center needed toys for its summer program, so the Soares asked their friends to relive their youths and buy toys for the Center.

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This charitable act helped the Soares twins become the youngest honorees at this year’s 20th annual Martin Luther King Multi-Purpose Center Benefit Dinner Dance at the Pearl River Hilton this past Sunday. The event helps raise money for the center and also honors local officials and others who have helped out in the community and, specifically, with the Center.

“We do get some public funding from Rockland County and Spring Valley, which is where the center is, as well as from the town of Ramapo, but it’s never enough, and so we have to do fundraising,” said Board of Directors President Winsome Downie-Rainford.

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The Martin Luther King Multi-Purpose Center is a non-profit organization founded in 1964 that provides various services and programs to the community. These include after school and summer programs for children, a youth employment program, a senior nutrition assistance program, a food pantry, martial arts and fitness classes, and the Rockland Family Shelter.

This year seven individuals were honored with a plaque from the Center. The Center has been handing out these awards since 1986 and past honorees include Clarkstown Supervisor Alex Gromack, New York State Assemblywoman Ellen Jaffee and Rockland County Executive C. Scott Vanderhoef.

The first honoree was retiring Rockland County Sheriff James Kralik, who was worked with the Department for 45 years and has been sheriff since 1991. However Kralik was quick to point out that the night was not about him but about honoring the Center and the work that it does for the community.

“I’m actually here to say thank you to them, because it’s the people of the Martin Luther King Center, and people like that, that make all the difference with us in law enforcement,” Kralik said. “The fact that they care about their community, care about the young people, do so much to point young people in the right direction to give them hope, give them the ability to succeed and do it with so little reward for themselves, that to me is wonderful.”

The other public official who received an award was New York State Senator David Carlucci, who was honored for his reform done as Clarkstown Town Clerk and as a senator who is committed to restoring society’s faith in politics.

Also honored at the event were Marianna Carter and Gerri Levy. Carter has worked with the Center for over 20 years and still participates in some of the Centers’ events despite retiring last year. Levy is the Executive Director of the Rockland Housing Action Coalition, which helps provide cost-effective housing for families and adults. Her latest project is Spring Valley Family Housing, which will feature 55 affordable family apartments in the village.

Other honorees included people who started charities that worked with the Center over the years, such as the Hands2Mouth Garden Initiative, co-chaired by Anthony Geathers and Lisa Kaess, who were on hand to accept the award.  The initiative creates community gardens throughout the County, including one at the MLK Center, and helps teach people about the benefits of growing their own food through these gardens.

The final charity honored was Christ’s Ambassadors of Charity, founded by Chris Zuccaro in 1999. The group runs around 25 food and clothing drives in Rockland and Bergen Counties each year and donates money to food banks, community centers, and soup kitchens in six counties in New York and New Jersey. Yet as Zuccaro pointed out while accepting his award, he and many of his fellow honorees were simply doing their duty as citizens.

“There’s almost like an undeserving quality for this for me because it’s really just doing what I’m supposed to be doing. How do you not step up for people who need you?” Zuccaro said.

The dinner dance raised money through ticket sales, auctions, raffles and ads in the journal for the event. The grand raffle prize was tickets to an upcoming New York Yankees game. The second place prize was a bat autographed by former Met Ed Kranepool and third place prize was a baseball autographed by former Yankee and current YES broadcaster John Flaherty. The live and silent auctions featured sports-related prizes as well as some others, including cases of wines and 1-hour massages. Attendees also took part in an altruistic auction where they pledged various amounts of money towards the Center.

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