This is a guest post from Tika Smith, the founder of BAWSE (Brilliantly Awesome Women Support Each-Other), a group that volunteered for the September 15th Day of Caring. Here, she shares her reflections on the day, plus the Night Out for Caring after party. 

The BAWSE ladies are pretty much still on an emotional high from Night Out for Caring! What an awesome, awesome event hosted by the United Way of King County. Together, 13,000 Participants volunteered their time and energy by serving at homeless shelters, reading to kids, garden work, paint jobs, and so much more. We’re so honored to have been included in the 13,000.

Our project we picked was to serve a meal at Seattle Gospel Mission’s Hope Place, a shelter for women and children. A very BAWSE thing to do, of course. Five of us BAWSE ladies arrived at Hope Place at 11am and headed for the kitchen. We helped prepare the meal for dinner, mopped floors, served lunch, toured their amazing facility. Hope Place is very nice and clean, with a warm, friendly staff.

Later, we joined the rest of the volunteers at the Safeco Field for the celebration. The sponsors did an amazing job! Incredible night of celebrating. We had tons and tons of good, free food and drinks, photo booth, and shook our tail feathers to great music. We even had photo ops with some really cool local celebrities along the way! Yup, you guessed it: over-the-top-fabulous!

That’s the United Way! When we can join forces for a common goal, it makes a huge, beautiful difference in the lives of so many. It’s 365 days in the year. 365 days to show small acts of kindness. Although United Way recognizes one day where we can all come together and join forces, do random acts of kindness and celebrate, so many lives are being touched daily by United Way, by BAWSE foundation, and other organizations and individuals. It really takes a village.

We walked out of Safeco Field with our hearts so full. Oh, yes and our bellies too! It’s such a blessing to serve. We already can’t wait to see what 2018 holds!