On Aug. 12, the Associates’ Committee of Gordon & Rees’s San Diego office hosted “Family Night” at the Monarch School, a school dedicated to serving K-12 students impacted by homelessness. Gordon & Rees attorneys and staff delivered, set up and served dinner at the school, which is located just blocks from Gordon & Rees’s downtown San Diego offices. Approximately 150 students and family members attended.
Gordon & Rees senior counsel Blake J. Woodhall, a member of the three-lawyer Associates’ Committee, says the group plans several charitable events each year. It decided to contact the Monarch School because of its outstanding – and growing -- educational program for homeless children.
"San Diego has one of the nation’s highest homeless populations. We wanted to do something to help kids and families impacted by the troubled economy. So we called the Monarch School and said, ‘What can we do?’ We basically gave them their daily bread.” But the attorneys and staff did more than serve dinner. “We enjoyed mingling with the students and their parents and getting to know them,” Woodhall says.
Gordon & Rees was founded in 1974 on the principles of community responsibility and model citizenship. For many years, Gordon & Rees’s San Diego office has participated in numerous charitable events. For example, last year, Gordon & Rees's San Diego office adopted 98 students at the David and Jillian Gilmour Early Education Campus in Vista, Calif., and during the holidays supplied a toy to each of the children. Also in 2012, more than 50 Gordon & Rees attorneys and staff helped raise donations for the American Heart Association by participating in the annual five kilometer Heart Walk.
The Monarch School’s mission is to educate students impacted by homelessness and to help them develop hope for a future with the necessary skills and experiences for personal success. The school provides an excellent academic and supportive environment in which any student in San Diego County who is impacted by homelessness will receive a rigorous education and grow personally to become a highly motivated, contributing member of society.
For more information about donating to the Monarch School, go to www.monarchschools.org/get-involved/ways-give/.