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Live PC Give PC spotlights: Avalanche safety and literacy

Alan Maguire, The Park Record

The Park City Community Foundation is hosting its fourth Live PC Give PC fundraising event that benefits nonprofits all over Summit County this Friday, Nov. 7.

In 2011, the inaugural year, $330,000 was raised during the 24-hour, all-online-donations fundraiser and in 2012, almost $600,000 was raised. Last year, $832,000 was given by 2,700 donors. This year’s goal is $1 million.

Among the charities that are participating in Live PC Give PC are the Utah Avalanche Center, the Christian Center of Park City, Friends of the Park City Library and Utah Legal Services.

For information or to make a donation, go to livepcgivepc.razoo.com.

Utah Avalanche Center

The Utah Avalanche Center describes itself as "a collaborative effort between the Forest Service Utah Avalanche Center," which is "responsible for avalanche forecasting and accident investigation and reporting," and the nonprofit Friends of the Utah Avalanche Center (FUAC), which handles "fundraising, avalanche awareness and education programs, events, the website, and business issues."

Paul Diegel, executive director at FUAC, said the Park City area is crucially important to the center.

"We’re really excited to have a presence on the Wasatch Back. We’re based in Salt Lake but we operate state-wide and we think that people that live in ski communities really need to know something about avalanches," he said.

"The Wasatch Back really has a lot of avalanche danger. Between the ridgeline that you can see [from Old Town], and the Uintas, there’s more avalanche hazard there than almost anywhere else in the state."

Diegel said Live PC Give PC is "huge" for the center.

"I’d say it’s just been the last few years that that Wasatch Back community has stepped up to help pay for [the center]. Two-thirds of our funding comes from nonprofit sources and the whole backside of the range was a little bit of a black hole for us, donation-wise, until just the last few years. That’s huge for us."

Members of the Utah Avalanche Center will be at White Pine Touring (1790 Bonanza Drive) from 5-7 p.m. Friday.

"We’re just going to be shaking hands, getting to know people, let people stop in and chat with our avalanche forecasters," Diegel said. "We’re going to bring us a couple cases of beer, we’re going to have donated pizza from Red Bicycle, and we’re going to be sharing that happy hour with Mountain Trails Foundation."

Christian Center of Park City

The Christian Center’s mission is to help "improve the lives of people and communities through meeting immediate and basic needs, serving as a leading networker of community resources, offering counseling services and spiritual care support, championing advocacy for those in need and most of all by giving hope."

"We have all sorts of different programs that are always going on at the Christian Center and that’s really what we’re trying to fund through Live PC Give PC," said Jackie Wilson, the center’s office manager.

"We just did registration for Operation Hope, which is our big Christmas program for children in the community and so that will be kicking off really soon with trying to find donors in the community to help us bring Christmas to these kids. And we also have an event coming up on Dec. 3 with a speaker who’s related to the Harvard Divinity School and we’re really excited about that event as well," she said.

Donations to the Christian Center will go to different programs depending on the donations. A $20 donation, for example, goes toward the "snacks in backpacks program for local school children." A $50 donation goes toward providing ‘pet food, supplies and some veterinarian help to low-income pet owners." More details are available at the Christian Center’s page on the Live PC Give PC website.

On Friday, Christian Center staff will be at Publik Coffee Roasters located inside the Kimball Art Center (638 Park Ave.). "And that will also be a donation station, so they can come in, they can talk with us and they can make a donation right there," Wilson said.

Friends of the Park City Library

"The mission of the Friends of the Library is to support the library in any way that they need," said Jean Daly, co-president of the Friends of the Park City Library executive board.

"For instance, we’ve given them money for Spanish as a second language, computer programs for children, or software for their media lab," she said.

The library is a membership organization with around 110 current members. Individual memberships to the Friends of the Park City Library are $15 and family memberships are $25.

One of its biggest fundraisers is an annual Labor Day-weekend book sale, but it’s becoming less profitable.

"With the way things are going now with books and e-books, we are not earning as much money from things like our book sale," Daly said. It makes Live PC Give PC more important.

"I think last year we had almost $2,000," she said, "and for us, that’s a fabulous amount of money."

Utah Legal Services

Low-income Utahns with legal issues have help available to them — Utah Legal Services provides free legal advice on civil matters to those who can’t afford it. It operates a twice-monthly clinic in Park City, funded the past few years by a grant the Park City Community Foundation.

Cynthia Mendenhall, longtime domestic paralegal for Utah Legal Services, runs the Park City clinics out of the Christian Center.

She said that the Park City clinics have not been busy recently, so while the clinic used to be in-person, it is now done via Skype, in order to "better utilize the grant that the foundation gave us."

The organization donated a laptop to the Christian Center last month so that people seeking help with legal issues can easily connect to Mendenhall at Utah Legal Services’ Salt Lake City office, where she has a team of lawyers available to consult with.

"We’re just looking for people who are seeking help," she said. "We know the need is there. We do have the availability of translators for almost any language that anyone would need, so we honestly have no language barriers with our interpreter service."

Utah Legal Services has a duty to participate in Live PC Give PC, Mendenhall said. "As a beneficiary of the Park City Foundation’s generosity, it’s only right that we help them raise more money so that they can help more nonprofits."

Utah Legal Services offers free legal clinics at the Christian Center in Park City on the first and third Thursdays of each month, from 2 p.m. to 3 p.m.

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