Kiwanis Pancake Breakfast and Silent Auction at WHS Saturday

Story by Kristen Street

Pictured are Mountain Alliance students after a recent caving adventure. The pancake breakfast and silent auction on Saturday, April 4, will benefit the youth of the High Country community both through funding Kiwanis youth programs and the Mountain Alliance leadership and service club at Watauga High School.

Once again, the Boone Kiwanis Club and Watauga High School’s Mountain Alliance are teaming up for their annual pancake breakfast and silent auction event. This year it will be on Saturday, April 4, from 7:30 to 11:30 a.m. at the Watauga High School cafeteria. Tickets for the breakfast will be $6 for adults and $3 dollars for children 12 and under.

Breakfast will include pancakes, bacon and sausage, with coffee, milk and juice to drink. The auction will take place at the same time and continue after the food is gone.

Around 30 Kiwanis members plan and work the event, which feeds 400 to 500 people each year. The Boone Kiwanis Club has held a pancake breakfast—somewhat of a tradition for Kiwanis members across the nation—for the past 24 years. “All of the proceeds go back to the community,” said Kiwanis member and pancake breakfast event chairman George Brudzinski. The Kiwanis club supports the area’s children, and all of the funds raised by the pancake breakfast will go toward the many programs supported by Kiwanis, such as the Terrific Kid program, Project Graduation, Santa’s Toy Box, the NC Safe Kids program, scholarships for WHS seniors, the Dictionary Project, Circle K and many more.

Mountain Alliance is an organization at Watauga High School that focuses on outdoor and experiential learning with a mission to “grow leaders through service, adventure and community.” Their half of the event, the silent auction, raises money to help students in the club pay for outings and service projects throughout the year. The group includes about 70 regular members, and 140 WHS students have participated in at least one Mountain Alliance event.

Tammie Jolly, secretary for the Mountain Alliance Board of Directors and parent of a participant, said, “This program is wonderful. Mountain Alliance has been a fun, beneficial way for the high school kids to get involved with service and the outdoors. It’s a whole different kind of learning.”

Some of the wide variety of items up for auction are ski vouchers, a private dinner for six from Reid’s Café, tickets to MerleFest, a The North Face tent and backpack, a weekend at the Biltmore Estate with a Land Rover driving class, a signed photo of Tom Selleck and even a goat.

Proceeds from the auction will help fund three Spring Break trips. Mountain Alliance students can travel to New Orleans for a service project, go backpacking in the Great Smoky Mountains or go on a biking trip down the coast. These trips are open to any member of WHS, and fundraising events like this make it possible for any student to afford to participate. “Each student at WHS has to find 13 hours of community service,” said Mountain Alliance director Todd Nolt, “but with Mountain Alliance there are sometimes even too many people wanting to get on the list for one trip. The kids are doing so much service for their community because they want to, not because they have to.”

The two organizations’ shared fundraiser has worked out well in the past. “Many of the people there for the auction stay for the breakfast, and people there for the breakfast go to the auction,” said Brudzinski. “It works out well. People come for whichever reason, but they stay to socialize and give to the community. We all have a good time.”

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