Bundles of giving
GABRIEL DAVIS | Hagadone News Network | UPDATED 1 year, 1 month AGO
Youth volunteers help load a volunteer delivery truck Saturday with Christmas baskets – or boxes – and food to help families in need during the holiday season as part of the annual Othello Community Christmas Baskets program.
GABRIEL DAVIS/COLUMBIA BASIN HERALD
Cars acting as volunteer delivery vehicles line up behind the city of Othello Fire Station Saturday morning for the Community Christmas Baskets program’s 47th donation event.
Christmas baskets and food are loaded into a community member’s truck to be delivered to families in need for the holidays for the Othello Community Christmas Basket program.
Gabriel Davis is a resident of Othello who enjoys the connections with his sources. Davis is a graduate of Northwest Nazarene University where he studied English and creative writing. During his free time, he enjoys reading, TV, movies and games – anything with a good story, though he has a preference for science fiction and crime. He covers the communities on the south end of Grant County and in Adams County. | December 18, 2023 2:57 PM
OTHELLO — The Othello Community Christmas Baskets program held its 47th annual donation deliveries Saturday for individuals and families in need during the holiday season.
The Community Christmas Baskets committee, run by a group of local community members, has been accepting donations throughout the year, ready to put the packages together to deliver before Christmas. Volunteers with vehicles ready for loading lined up behind the city of Othello Fire Station Saturday morning.
Committee Co-President Merritt Johnson and his wife, Charlotte Johnson, were helping run the show.
“Right now we're at 363 (baskets),” Charlotte Johnson said. “We tried to keep it around 350. We pre-order a lot of stuff so that's kind of where we're at. I mean, we have a little extra so we can go up from there. The year of COVID we did over 400.”
Merritt Johnson said he was part of the original group that created the basket donation event.
“There were six of us that started it out. We were all firemen and Eagles (Club) members and we had a couple of bad accidents right before Christmas. We knew the families weren’t going to have much of a Christmas and we got talking about it, so the six of us put in $20 apiece and we did Christmas for I think five or six families that year.”
Merritt Johnson explained how the group continued to organize the event after the first year.
“We knew there was a need and kept going. I'm the last surviving member of that group,” he said. “We were firemen so (eventually) we just had the firemen kind of take it and then they said ‘Well, we don't want to do it anymore.’ So we just made a committee, me, my brother and some other people and we just kept it going.”
Charlotte Johnson added that some of the families still needed help the following year after the first event. She also said this year’s event was going excellently so far.
“The youth have joined us and brought us into the 21st century,” she said. “The youth have come down because there's a lot of putting things together, like the apples and onions have to be all sorted and we bag beans. So the community donates apples, beans, onions, potatoes and onions.”
Several family members and young volunteers were working alongside the older committee members Saturday to load the packages into the delivery cars.
Ken Johnson, Merritt Johnson’s nephew, also helps organize the event and said he hopes to see it continue through even younger generations.
“Now my sons have joined us, so it’s generational,” he said.
Merritt Johnson said the fire department does not organize the basket donation, but it does allow the use of the station for storage and for loading the deliveries. The baskets are not so much baskets as boxes of food, utensils, toys, hats, gloves and other useful items Ken Johnson said were to help the families make a nice meal and enjoy their Christmas.
“It's a lot of work, but … I was helped when I was about 8 years old, so I thought ‘I'm going to help if I ever get that position,’ and so God put me in that position,” Merritt Johnson said. “This is the 47th year, started with the five or six baskets and it's up to that (363). The community does an excellent job of supporting us.”
Gabriel Davis may be reached at gdavis@columbiabasinherald.com. Download the Columbia Basin Herald app on iOS and Android.
Cars acting as volunteer delivery vehicles line up behind the city of Othello Fire Station Saturday morning for the Community Christmas Baskets program’s 47th donation event.
Christmas baskets and food are loaded into a community member’s truck to be delivered to families in need for the holidays for the Othello Community Christmas Basket program.
ARTICLES BY GABRIEL DAVIS
Work-based learning lets students build their own futures
MOSES LAKE — Work-based learning provides education opportunities for the workforce to receive hands-on training and technical education and prepare themselves to enter various industries. Educators and workforce development professionals from Eastern Washington discussed some the training they offer and the benefits of their programs. Next Generation Zone, an affiliate of WorkSource based in Spokane, provides job training opportunities for youth and young adults ages 16 to 24. Program Coordinator Kate Martin said there are multiple benefits to the program. “One of them is a paid work experience, and that’s where we reach out to area employers who are willing to take a young person and train them,” she said. “This is a short-term learning experience, so it’s typically about 240 hours; sometimes it could be longer or shorter. We’re the actual employer; we cover all of their wages, taxes, the L&I, and the employer just agrees to give them the experience and train them in whatever field it is that they’re wanting to go into.”
Serving schools: ESD superintendents reflect on operations, priorities
MOSES LAKE — Educational service districts are government-mandated agencies put in place to provide services to school districts across the state. ESD Superintendents discussed what they do and their priorities in operating their districts. ESD 105, led by Superintendent Kevin Chase, serves four counties, including Kittitas, Yakima and portions of Klickitat and Grant counties and provides support for 25 school districts – including Royal School District and Wahluke School District – and more than 66,000 students. “We help them collaborate with each other as well or collaborate with other partners,” Chase said. “(It’s) a lot of advocacy work, either regionally or across the state, or even federally, working on different issues that impact our education. And we provide very specialized services in certain situations in order to meet the needs of our students in our region and of our school districts.”
Columbia Basin Project making headway through Odessa Groundwater program
CASHMERE — The Columbia Basin Project is making gradual progress toward completion with particularly significant accomplishments for the Odessa Groundwater Replacement Program in the last six months or so, according to Columbia Basin Development League Executive Director Sara Higgins. “When we’re dealing with a project of this size, advancement is kind of like watching paint dry, but yes, there have been (developments),” she said. “There are a lot of exciting things happening right now.” There are more than 300 miles of main canals, about 2,000 miles of lateral canals and 3,500 miles of drains and wasteways in the irrigation project, according to the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation website. The CBDL advocates for the operation of those waterways and for the project to continue “build-out.”