$10,000 raised for kids on ice (ProJo)
If Skate for Joy’s inaugural fundraiser on Feb. 23 had been competing in the Olympics, it would have received a gold medal.
The newly formed organization, devoted to bringing ice skating to inner-city children, filled up the Hi-Hat at Davol Square with 125 guests. The mayor of Providence made an appearance. Honorary chair Fayneese Miller of Pawtucket, an associate professor of education and human development at Brown University, addressed the crowd, and a silent auction saw a Maxwell Mays painting sell for $400. Chef Kevin Millonzi of Atomic Catering donated by whipping up a gourmet dinner for 10, which sold for $500. Some $10,000 was raised.
First appeared in The Sunday Journal Magazine.
Sunday, March 7, 2004
Lifestyles
$10,000 raised for kids on ice
by: Faye Zuckerman
Warwick’s Carolyn Drumm, a former figure skater who masterminded the organization, said she was pleased with the response. She added, “My hope is that we will be able to expand the program.”
The learn-to-skate program is being offered to children at a Boys and Girls Club in Providence. It began nearly four years ago when Drumm asked her husband, Jim, to pay for children to use the downtown Fleet Center ice rink. She rented the equipment and started teaching the basics.
I was behind her project from the beginning,” Jim Drumm said. “I gladly wrote the checks.”
Nearly a year ago, Carolyn Drumm and two friends from Warwick, Meredith Sackett and Carolyn McGillivray, decided to formalize the skating program. They put together the non-profit corporation one evening while sitting on Sackett’s front porch.
“Look at what we have accomplished,” said McGillivray, a nurse practitioner and the board’s vice president. And the icing on the cake, she said, was that the first fundraiser for Skate for Joy scored such high marks.