We love living and working in Kitsap County, and community involvement is a key component of the way we operate. So, we thought we would take a moment to share the many ways in which our Windermere Silverdale office has supported and invested in Kitsap this year. By doing so, we hope it spreads awareness about these great events and nonprofits.
Local Events
Every year, we participate in Windermere’s Community Service Day. This annual event is a day when all Windermere offices across 10 states close to participate in a local community service project. Collectively, we’ve logged over 1,000,000 community service hours so far. This year, we volunteered at Silverwood School. An independent school, Silverwood School engages students in project-based, hands-on learning through an outdoor-focused curriculum. We enjoyed helping out by cleaning up around the property, pressure washing, cleaning windows, limbing trees, weeding, and more. You can view some of our agents at work in our fun Community Service Day video below.
This year we also held our annual Shred Fest event. It’s a free event where you can safely and securely shred old documents and recycle old electronics. We enjoyed helping people declutter and catching up with old clients and friends.
In the fall, we hosted a free Halloween Trunk or Treat at our office. It’s always fun to give candy, see creative costumes, and celebrate with our colleagues, friends, and clients.
Donations
There are many important organizations to support, and this year we focused our efforts on a handful of great nonprofits. We donated food and helped promote Pacific Northwest Title’s annual food drive. 2021 marked their 17th year. In Kitsap County, approximately one-third of adults are food insecure and over a third of local children are in need of free and reduced lunch. In addition to the food drive, we donated $2,000 to Central Kitsap Food Bank’s Backpacks 4 Kids program. This allows kids to go home with backpacks full of food on Fridays to help their families.
Another great organization that helps youth in need is The Coffee Oasis. We donated to and helped promote their Back to School Supply Drive. The Coffee Oasis is a nonprofit, faith-based organization that empowers youth who are escaping violence, homelessness, and poverty. They provide mental health services, job training, and short and long-term housing options, which help hundreds of teenagers in Kitsap County and beyond.
We were also happy to donate $2,000 to St. Vincent de Paul, a Bremerton-based organization that offers a shelter for women and children, a food bank, groceries for the community, affordable clothing and housewares, and more.
For the holiday season, we are donating gifts to Olive Crest, which helps teens who are phasing out of the foster program. There are over 400,000 children in the foster system across the United States. Olive Crest provides a variety of services to work to end child abuse and ensure that every child is safe in a strong, loving home. For Olive Crest’s holiday gifts, all of our agents pledge a donation amount, and then some of them do the shopping, and we have a group gift wrapping day. Right now our total donated for this event is up to $3,117.
There are many different ways to give back, and we’re proud of what we’ve done so far through our office’s community involvement and our Windermere Foundation. A portion of every Windermere agent’s commission is donated to the Windermere Foundation, and we’re also proud to be part of the broader Windermere Foundation. It impacts communities across 10 states. We’ve collectively raised over $41 million for programs that provide shelter, food, children’s programs, and more.
If you’re looking to get more involved in our community, we hope this has given you some ideas. We should note that our Windermere Silverdale agents also support a variety of charities on their own. So, this only reflects our office-wide community involvement.