Peninsula Kiwanis serves up civic service

From the bacon, hash browns, sausages and pancakes that sizzled on two griddles to the bagels, Dunkin’ Donuts and cakes that accompanied them at the annual Peninsula Kiwanis Club Christmas Dream Breakfast, the aroma of community service was in the fall air.

The proceeds of last Sunday’s breakfast, at Our Lady of Good Counsel Church in Inwood, will help Peninsula Kiwanis purchase holiday gifts for 800 children.

Kiwanians Joe Girardi and Frank Tavella warmed up the griddles and cooked. “You help and give back,” said Girardi, a 20-year Kiwanis member who grew up two blocks from the church and now lives in Lynbrook. “I always said that if I did well, I’d give back, and I did. I do the right thing because it’s the right thing to do.”

Chapter President Kevin Cooney said that depending on the attendance, the breakfast generates $5,000 to $10,000. Admission is $5 per adult, and children under 12 eat free. There are also prize raffles and a 50/50 raffle. Donations, and money from other Kiwanis events, supplement the Christmas gift purchasing. The gifts, usually toys for younger children, are distributed to several organizations, including the Five Towns Community Center and the Five Towns Early Learning Center. The first Christmas Dream Breakfast was held in 1991.

Young volunteers from Hewlett High School’s K Club and Molloy College’s Circle K Club, both sponsored by Peninsula Kiwanis, also help. Molloy sophomore Christina Cascione, a Hewlett High K Club member before she joined the Circle K Club, has accompanied her father, Tony, to the breakfast for 15 years.

“I grew up here,” said Christina, president of the Molloy club, as she and fellow Circle K member Gianna Josiah cut butter. “It’s a good feeling that I helped someone. I like helping people.” Majoring in education, she is aiming to teach first through sixth grades and earn her special-education certification as well.

Josiah, a Molloy sophomore as well, shared her friend’s sentiments. “The sense of helping people, I enjoy that,” she said, adding that she is studying to be a language speech pathologist.

For 51 years, Peninsula Kiwanis has been part of the Five Towns charitable landscape. With the money they raise, volunteers support the Action Club, which is part of Camp Anchor, which serves special-needs youth, as well as the annual Special Field Day picnic in May at the town park in Lido Beach.

The club also sent 60 children to Kamp Kiwanis this summer — the most in New York state, according to Cooney — and presents money to graduating seniors from Hewlett and Lawrence high schools. Just before the school year began, Peninsula Kiwanis gave 275 backpacks filled with school supplies and other items such as blankets, toothpaste, toothbrushes, shampoo and soap to children in the Hewlett-Woodmere and Lawrence school districts. And Kiwanians helped stock school nurse offices with 1,000 pairs of underwear for younger children.

Next on the club’s calendar is an annual food drive that helps fill the food pantry at Our Lady of Good Counsel, and feeds upward of 300 families. Kiwanis members built the pantry roughly 12 years ago, Cooney said. The food drive is Saturday and Sunday, Nov. 9 and 10, from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. at the King Kullen at 1765 Peninsula Blvd. in Hewlett.

Peninsula Kiwanis is at 421 Doughty Blvd., Suite 140, in Inwood.