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Mount Si gets an overtime victory Page 5
October 9, 2014
Food bank hopes to score big with 12th Man Drive By Sherry Grindeland Join the Snoqualmie Valley Food Bank 12th Man Team as the all-volunteer group tries to fill its pantry with cases of canned goods. The food bank will build a giant 12 with cases of food to show its support for the Seattle Seahawks football team while helping feed neighbors in need. Bring cases of food to the food bank between noon and 1:30 p.m. Oct. 12 at 122 E. Third St., North Bend. The cases will be used to make a giant 12, which will be photographed and posted on the agency’s website and Facebook page. “Hunger impacts us all,” Snoqualmie Food Bank Director Heidi Dukich said. “Your kids may sit next to someone at school who went to bed hungry last night.” The health and wellness of
the whole community, she said, starts with taking care of the people who are struggling. “Everyone should have access to food,” Dukich said. The Snoqualmie Valley Food Bank is a one-stop service agency. Trained volunteers are on duty during food bank hours, from 9:30 a.m. to 6:30 p.m. each Wednesday, to help people connect to community and government resources for aid. The Snoqualmie Valley Food Bank supplied more than 8,000 summer meals for children in the area. Children comprise 35 percent of the population the food bank serves; seniors account for 23 percent. “These are the most vulnerable people in our community,” Dukich said. “We need to take care of them.” See a list of needed food items at www.snoqualmievalleyfoodbank.org.
By Greg Farrar
Brothers Hari (left) and Vishnu Rathnam display the robotic equipment they use to teach classes that raised $1,595 for beds for a school in India.
Brothers’ robotics classes nets $1,595 for school in India By Sam Kenyon
Catch this rising star Emily Hamilton, 8, of North Bend, performs with co-star Daddy Warbucks en route to winning the Catch a Rising Star talent competition Sept. 20 at the Washington State Fair in Puyallup. Emily tap danced and sang her ventriloquism act to the song ‘I Don’t Need Anything But You,’ from the musical ‘Annie,’ winning $325. Her sister Abigail, 11, was a finalist in the show. Abigail tap danced to the Neil Diamond number ‘Cherry, Cherry.’ Contributed
Vishnu and Hari Rathnam helped give mentally disabled children a place to sleep that wasn’t the ground, and water that is safe to drink. The brothers, who wanted to do a community service project, raised $1,595 for a school in India by turning their robotics hobby into a paying operation. Vishnu, a 15-year-old sophomore at Mount Si High School, and his 12-year-old brother Hari, a seventh-grader at Chief Kanim Middle School, can’t remember when they weren’t into robotics. They are experienced robot programmers and designers, having competed in the First LEGO League for years. In July, they held camps to teach robotics to elementary and middle school students. “We had to shut down the first class because there was too many kids,” Hari said. They added a class and even then had to turn away wouldbe participants. In the end,
they doubled the money they hoped to raise. “These kids started out not really knowing anything (about robotics) and at the end of the week they were really, really proficient in the engineering process of picking a problem and solving it,” Vishnu said. They taught eight children, ages 8-11, three hours a day for five days, July 14-18. Then, July 21-25, they pulled double duty. Each day they taught five students in the morning and then headed to Sammamish to teach another class of nine. In all, they spent 45 hours teaching 22 students. “I sort of felt like my schoolteachers,” Vishnu said. “It was kind of a different experience being on the other side.” The boys’ mother Chitra Rathnam watched her sons learn to control unruly students. “I’m pretty surprised how they were behaving so mature,” she said. “Vishnu, in fact, came and told me, ‘Now I understand your pain.’”
The classes went wild the final day when the students teamed up and tested their new skills. Hari and Vishnu set up a game common in robotic circles: sumo competition. Each team’s robot attempts to push the other outside a circle. “It was really fun for all these kids,” Hari said. “They get really loud. They start screaming and cheering for their team so that was pretty cool.” The students’ parents came to watch the competition. “The kids stayed about an hour after the class was supposed to end, just to keep competing,” Vishnu said. “All the See ROBOTICS, Page 2 Prsrt Std U.S. Postage PAID Kent, WA Permit No. 71 POSTAL CUSTOMER