Fashion and heart - Santa Barbara News-Press

St.’s Vincent prepares for annual benefit

COURTESY PHOTO
Volunteers Claudia Lash, left, and Pat Lupo started the annual St. Vincent’s fashion show as a benefit for the nonprofit, which helps local families.

St. Vincent’s, a Santa Barbara nonprofit, will host its annual fashion show and luncheon Saturday at the Rosewood Miramar Beach.

The Montecito event helps to raise money to support those families living at St. Vincent’s by providing housing, child care and job-search assistance through the St. Vincent’s Family Strengthening Program.

St. Vincent’s has been ensconced in the Santa Barbara community for decades. The fashion show invites the community to support the organization by taking part in a silent auction with more than 80 beautiful baskets with items gathered from all over. It also includes a luncheon and a fashion show featuring adult and child models.

This year’s event is the largest guest list to date, with about 250 attendees expected. The show takes place on Saturday from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m., and the resort is at 1759 S. Jameson Lane.

In 2009, Pat Lupo and Claudia Lash, two volunteers for St. Vincent’s, started the event on St. Vincent’s campus. It continued to grow in both size and popularity year after year. In 2019 the event got so big that the hosting location had to be moved to Bishop Diego High School.

Based on the 2019 attendance, this year’s event is being hosted at the Rosewood Miramar Beach for the first time.

“This year’s event will feature about 100-120 baskets which are sold during a silent auction as well as dozens of raffle and door prizes,” Dr. Regina Ruiz, vice president of development and marketing for St. Vincent’s, told the News-Press.

This is the 12th year that the event will be held, but it will be the first year that the event has sponsors, including American Riviera Bank and KickStart Consulting. This year also marks the 25th anniversary of the Family Strengthening Program. The program offers mothers the chance to live in one of the nonprofit’s cottages for up to 27 months and offers preschool services for children, housing and support counseling.

“The program gives mothers a second chance to turn their lives around and uplift two generations,” Dr. Ruiz told the News-Press.

The fashion show portion of the event will be hosted by Amy Curti, a Cabi Stylist consultant. Ms. Curti will be bringing all the looks for the fashion show, as well as about 10 models.

This year’s new addition is the children’s portion sponsored by Lemondrop in Montecito. The models for the children’s portion are actually the daughters of guest speaker and program graduate Rosa Linda.

When Ms. Linda first came to St. Vincent’s, her daughters were 8 months and 2 years old. Ms. Linda is now a property manager for People’s Self-Help Housing.

St. Vincent’s is known for its beautiful 21-acre campus, which hosts about 12 mothers and their children as part of the Family Strengthening Program. In totality, the campus hosts about 600 in-need residents including families, seniors and the Family Strengthening Program.

St. Vincent’s is the oldest nonprofit in Santa Barbara, founded in 1858 by The Daughters of Charity.

“The main thing is knowing that this is an organization that for 25 years has designated services to mothers and children, going off of 163 years of Daughters of Charity,” Dr. Ruiz said.

The fundraiser generally brings in about $30,000, but this year organizers are expecting to bring in a lot more.

A donation can be made or last minute tickets to the event can be purchased at

stvincents-sb.org.

email: kzehnder@newspress.com

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