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Kiwanis Club donates to SHIP

The Kiwanis Noon Club of Anacortes recently donated $4,000 to the Ship Harbor Interpretive Preserve (SHIP) to provide volunteers with construction and administrative funds. This adds to previous donations totaling $8,000 by the club to the project.

"It is important to help these volunteers preserve Ship Harbor's wetlands for our community," says Lin Folsom, Kiwanis Noon Club president. "This project will enable school kids, local citizens and out-of-town travelers to continue to be able to enjoy this scenic, but delicate, area and to learn more about a wetland environment as well as Anacortes history."

The Kiwanis Noon Club gives over $100,000 each year to this community for scholarships and community projects. The organization's principal fundraising project is the Kiwanis Shop, a thrift shop at 5th and O streets, operated entirely by volunteers. "We appreciate the public's support of the Kiwanis Shop," says Folsom, "because it enables us to return so much money to our community. It makes our members' many hours of volunteer work very worthwhile."

Local volunteers also are important to the success of the SHIP project. More than 60 volunteers have been hard at work for months, observing and reporting on wildlife, plants and water levels; taking photographs for monitoring across all seasons and for educational use; writing informational materials; researching history and culture of the area; and applying for grants and other funding.

Horizons Foundation, a Seattle grantgiver has pledged $10,000 to help fund construction of SHIP. Other foundations and governmental agencies are also being sent applications for funding.

At the Anacortes Parks Foundation Booth at the May Anacortes Waterfront Festival, SHIP was featured and the public invited to "Be a Shipmate - Buy a Plank program. The purpose of the booth was to gain public exposure for the project, and we were pleased with the response. Manned by Mark Backlund, David Hall, Doug Colglazier, and Jim Falk, the group was pleased with the public interest and incidentally accepted donations of $300 with more pledged.