New member class helps serve community

Members of the 2007-2008 class of new members of the Topeka Rotary Club took on a class project this year. The goal was to help them get more involved in their club.
That project came to fruition last month when the club held a clothing drive to benefit the Topeka Rescue Mission. Club members brought in dozens of bags of clothing which were loaded onto a truck and taken to the mission.

"The Rotary mission is to help people locally and globally," Kim Gronniger, a new member of the Topeka Rotary Club, told the Topeka Capital-Journal., "This was an opportunity for our new members to participate in a charitable activity that would benefit our community."

Kathleen Williams, member of the Topeka Rotary Club and one of the organizers of the clothing drive, used the club’s new Facebook page to promote the project.

Topeka Rescue Mission - Reaching Out to the Homeless of Topeka

Barry Feaker has served as the Executive Director of the Topeka Rescue Mission since 1986.

“The homeless picture was very different in those days,” Feaker said. “At that time there were about fifteen to twenty people staying with us a night. Now we have about two hundred plus who are with us.”

The Topeka Rescue Mission is a Christian ministry dedicated to providing food, shelter, clothing, training, and hope to homeless and impoverished men, women, and children.
The facility is staffed 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. At the Topeka Rescue Mission no one is ever turned away because of race, national origin, religion, sex, or age.

“It has been one of the most interesting experiences of my life to live in a community that has such a benevolent spirit as we have here in Topeka, Kansas,” says Feaker “Today the numbers of women and children are about the same as the men. This changed a number of years ago. It used to be that the average age of the homeless was 55 years old, now the average age is 32 years old and that does not include the children. We have anywhere from 300 to 500 children that come to use each year.”

To learn more about the Topeka Rescue Mission or to volunteer your services, visit www.trmonline.org/ or call 785-354-1744.