LIHUE — “They don’t have anything,” said MaBel Fujiuchi of the Zonta Club of Kauai. “We can at least make them some curtains to give the facility a sense of home.” The Zonta Club of Kauai combined with adult volunteers,
LIHUE — “They don’t have anything,” said MaBel Fujiuchi of the Zonta Club of Kauai. “We can at least make them some curtains to give the facility a sense of home.”
The Zonta Club of Kauai combined with adult volunteers, including husbands and friends, to create curtains for the Kauai Economic Opportunity shelter, specifically for the single women and family quarters.
Under terms of the Weinberg service project program, the Zonta Club of Kauai performed the service project on Sept. 23 with more than two dozen adult volunteers, and, in return, the Harry and Jeanette Weinberg Foundation would provide a $10,000 award to the beneficiary of the Zonta’s choosing.
“We did everything from scratch,” Fujiuchi said. “We had to measure, secure the fabric and sew the curtains. This was not a store-bought project. Some of the ladies had never sewn this much before. But, thanks to the ladies and our volunteers, we did it. We even finished sooner than we expected.”
The $10,000 award was presented to Paige Javier, the multi-systemic therapy supervisor for Parents and Children Together, an agency that provides services statewide and will be celebrating its 50th anniversary in 2018.
“The funds will be used for the family visitation center on Kauai,” Javier said. “The center provides court-ordered and voluntary visitation services to the island. Funding for the center is through the state of Hawaii Judiciary, the Kauai United Way, and from private donor donations,” she said.
“Many families request two visits a week with their children, and our current funding is not sufficient to accommodate these requests. The funding will help to provide one additional day per week, and one weekend day per month. The funding will provide an additional 416 staffing hours annually, and ensure that families will be able to visit at least once a week, if not twice weekly.”
The PACT family visitation center was initiated in 1994 on Oahu and is designed to protect antagonistic partners from encountering one another during child visitations and exchanges.
FVC provides an opportunity for children to have safe and regular contact with their non-custodial parents, and protects the children from being caught in the crossfire of friction and abuse during contentious and potentially violent separation or divorce situations.
