You’ll have a chance this weekend to be part of the inauguration of Laura Kelly and Lynn Rogers.
Bring food.
Kelly, the governor-elect, and Rogers, the lieutenant-governor-elect, will host a statewide day of service Saturday as part of the inaugural celebration leading up to their taking office at the Statehouse on Monday.
In Wichita, “We wanted to do (food) backpacks for kids because that fits well with our education theme and my history,” Rogers said.
Rogers, a Democrat, served on the Wichita USD 259 school board for 17 years, starting in 2001.
He was elected as a state Senator in 2016, and served as both a senator and school board member until January of last year.
He left the school board and held on to his Senate seat while campaigning as Kelly’s running mate against the Republican ticket of Secretary of State Kris Kobach and Wink Hartman.
Rogers will personally join two service projects in Wichita on Saturday. Kelly will handle events in Topeka, her hometown.
Events also are scheduled in Hutchinson, Overland Park, Salina, Lawrence, Garden City and Leavenworth.
The Wichita events will involve collecting and packaging food for children and families in poverty and/or crisis situations.
It starts at 10 a.m. at the Kansas Food Bank , 1919 E. Douglas, where volunteers will work for two hours packing food bags.
Those will go to schools that distribute backpack food to chronically hungry children on Fridays so their families have something to eat on weekends.
Because the food bank can only accommodate 100 volunteers at once, residents who want to participate are asked to RSVP via https://act.myngp.com/Forms/-3799928009379477504.
Food donations also will be accepted on site during the event, Rogers said.
The second service event will be a food drive from 1 to 3 p.m. at the Advance Learning Library, 711 W. 2nd.
Food from there will go to the Wichita Family Crisis Center, which provides services for women and children escaping domestic violence and sexual exploitation.
Rogers said they’re especially requesting shelf-stable microwaveable meals.
“The Crisis Center a lot of times puts these families up in a hotel because they don’t have bed space,” Rogers said. “They want food you can heat in a hotel microwave.”
The food drive at the library will double as a reception celebrating the inauguration, he said.
“We’ll have a short video about the inaugural and I want to have the opportunity to say thank you to everybody,” Rogers said.
Information on service projects and volunteer opportunities elsewhere in the state is available at www.kellyrogersinauguration.com.
This story was originally published January 07, 2019 3:36 PM.
