Celebrate the beginning of the holiday season
Haul out the holly and dust off your Santa hats! The Morgan Hill Kiwanis Holiday Lights Parade is coming to town beginning at 5:30 Saturday, Dec. 7. For more than 40 years, families from Morgan Hill and surrounding areas have joined as a community to celebrate the beginning of the holiday season.
Morgan Hill Kiwanis, in partnership with the city, are proud to bring you this amazing event and promise an evening of merriment and wonder.
This year, Kiwanis parade organizers are proud to honor long time resident, Morgan Hill Life editor and champion of our town, Marty Cheek, with a logo named “Marty Claus.” Created by well-known local artist, Mark Hoffman, the new parade mascot features a mushroom Santa with twinkling lights and gifts. We are grateful to Mark for his inspired design.
The Morgan Hill Kiwanis Club, currently led by Jayne Perryman, has served the children of our area since 1952. The club’s primary philanthropy centers on the TurnAround Scholarship (TAS) Program, which awards funds to local graduating high school seniors who are going on to trade school, two or four year college. TAS recipients are provided with financial support for up to five years as they complete their educational programs. It is an amazing and innovative program. Two previous TAS awardees, Alban Diaz and Jessica Castellanos, have gone on to run the El Toro Boys and Girls Club. Our scholarship committee of Cristina Jacobo, Janice Guzman and Sally Pollard have already begun the process with MHUSD high school counselors to identify our next group of applicants. You can find out more about this program at our website morganhillkiwanis.org.
The club also oversees and supports a number of other important programs, including a Key Club for students at Sobrato High School. We have recently received requests from Britton Middle School and Christopher High School to bring Kiwanis school youth service leadership programs to their campuses. It’s a very exciting time to be a Kiwanis member in Morgan Hill.
You may also have seen our bright blue tents at Friday Night Music where we serve a variety of food as a fundraiser. We work closely with the Centennial Recreation Center to fund recreation program scholarships for kids, provided initial funding for the special needs activity room, and host an annual breakfast for senior citizens.
This year, the Kiwanis Parade Committee, headed by Dennis Bettencourt, has initiated a new way to support and continue the variety of programs they oversee. For the first time, the club is asking the community to sponsor the parade with a donation or a business sponsorship. Rather than holding an annual gala dinner, Kiwanis is trying a new way to raise funds. We are proud to name our major community and business parade sponsors, the Edward Boss Prado Foundation, the city of a Morgan Hill, Pacific Gas and Electric, Valley Water Trucks, Goat Yoga and Hillview Printing. There is a QR code on our advertisement in this issue of Morgan Hill Life or you can go to our website morganhillkiwanis.org to donate. We look forward to seeing you Dec. 7. We will ring in the holidays with cheer and a spirit of community togetherness. See you there!
Margaret Graham is a longtime Morgan Hill resident and a Kiwanis Club board member.