Shelter seeks hosts for benefit dinners

Plans are taking shape for the Friendship Shelter’s 15th annual Dinners Across Laguna and Beyond event — and anyone with a flair for entertaining is invited to hold a dinner to help raise funds for the shelter’s programs.

Dinners Across Laguna and Beyond are held by volunteer hosts on their choice of three Saturdays in early 2007: Jan. 27, Feb. 4 or Feb. 11. Tickets are $125 per person; every dollar goes to the Friendship Shelter.

Co-chairs Gayle Verst and Barbara McMurray have created a flexible format where dinner hosts use their creativity to get friends together for a great cause.

“Dinners can be large, small or in-between,” McMurray noted.

“An event can be an intimate candlelit gathering, a progressive dinner roaming a neighborhood, a blowout banquet for dozens, dinner in a reserved room in a restaurant, or a themed party, limited only by your imagination and budget. It’s the shelter’s most popular fundraiser because it’s such an enjoyable, community-building event,” she said.

To find out more about hosting a dinner, or to be invited to a dinner, contact McMurray at (949) 494-5388 or Verst at (949) 715-7993.

Since its inception, Dinners Across Laguna and Beyond has raised $595,000. Dinners held in early 2006 raised more than $50,000 from 17 events held throughout Orange County. Approximately 50% of the revenues needed to run Friendship Shelter come from individual donations and fundraising events.

Founded in 1988, Friendship Shelter provides housing, a variety of support services and a comprehensive rehabilitation program to homeless adults from all over Orange County, about 300 per year. It is the only year-round emergency shelter in south Orange County for homeless unaccompanied adults.

The shelter’s initial 60-day program is a stringent one that involves intensive counseling, employment searches and saving 80 percent of wages earned.

Visit www.friendshipshelter.org to learn more about Friendship Shelter or to make an online donation.