Sunday, May 5, 2024
Fair, 81°Wind: 12.7 mph, S
Welcome to our new web site!
To give our readers a chance to experience all that our new website has to offer, we have made all content freely avaiable, through October 1, 2018.
During this time, print and digital subscribers will not need to log in to view our stories or e-editions.
The theme of the 2023 Dress the Child fundraising dinner is “Yacht Party-2: Mexican Riviera.”
It will begin at 5 p.m. Sunday, Oct. 8, at Amador Live, 302 S. Main St.
Tickets are $100.
The event follows last year’s successful fundraiser for Dress the Child, which works with local schools to provide new clothing and shoes for hundreds of children in need. Last year’s dinner raised about $25,000 and helped the program buy new clothes and shoes for 419 children in the Las Cruces and Gadsden school districts, said long time co-coordinator Doug Boberg.
"The dinner fundraiser has been a critical source of funding for the Dress the Child program for over 30 years and last year's Yacht Party event was one of the most successful,” Boberg said. “Attendees told us they enjoyed the casual format, loved the incredible food, and getting to meet and visit with the chefs was an added benefit.”
"We're taking the yachts out to different ports,” said Dress the Child long-time co-coordinator Matt Holt. “This year we are sailing to the Mexican Riviera."
“The chefs liked last year's dinner format of the food stations and interacting with dinner guests," said chef Vince Campbell, who has helped organized the fundraising dinner for 30 years.
The 2022 Yacht Party fundraiser was "the best ever," Campbell said
In addition to Campbell, from Grapevine Plaza, this year’s participating chefs are, from Doña Ana Community College, Culinary Arts Director Tom Drake and cake and patisserie instructor Jenn Hart; from Amador Patio, Executive Chef Enrique Hernandez; from Hacienda de Mesilla, Executive Chef Cecelia Castro; from Salud! de Mesilla, Chef and owner Russell Hernandez; from Memorial Medical Center, Executive Chef and Food Service Director Paul McKim; and from Lescombes Bistro, Executive Chef Garrett Moore.
Dress the Child is sponsored by the Rio Grande Rotary Foundation. Dress the Child works with Las Cruces Public Schools and the Gadsden Independent School District to provide new clothes and shoes to children in need, many of whom have never had new clothes.
In December, volunteers will take each child and a parent shopping at a local store. Each child will have $100 to spend on clothing; participating stores have always added more to that total, he said.
Dress the Child provided clothing to 15 needy children in 1984 (its first year). It provided clothes to more than 450 children in 2014, 466 in 2015, 487 in 2016, 581 in 2017, 627 in 2018 and 518 in 2019. Numbers dropped to 300 in 2020 and 150 in 2021 because of COVID-19, Boberg said.
Contact Boberg at 575-644-9469 and drboberg@gmail.com, Holt at 575-993-2331 and matt.holt@attorneyholt.com, Campbell at 575-496-9650 and otisvcampbell@gmail.com and Drake at 575-312-6923 and tdrake@nmsu.edu.
To donate, send a check to LCRGRF Dress the Child, P.O. Box 550, Las Cruces, NM 88004. Or, take your donation to First New Mexico Bank, 3000 E. Lohman Ave., and give it to Julie Koenig.
