When you arrive at the Starbucks headquarters before the baristas you know it's early and on Sat. Dec. 3 hundreds of volunteers led by the West Seattle Rotary club held their 38th annual West Seattle Rotary Club Children's Shopping spree.

According to the Rotary website, "The project started from very humble beginnings in the late 1960's when a few Rotarians took several young people Christmas shopping for a few clothing items."

The program pairs a child with an adult and everyone gets breakfast at the SODO Kitchen in Starbucks Center, whose workers volunteer their time.

100 children are fitted for shoes, coats and clothing during the event.

CLICK THE PHOTO ABOVE TO SEE MORE

Every year The Rotary Club of West Seattle alternates between all of the elementary schools in West Seattle.

The children are chosen by family support workers who look for children who are in need. Each child is given a warm winter jacket and socks (prior to the shopping spree) and a gift certificate for Sears and coupled with a 10% discount the store provides they make the dollars stretch as far as possible to purchase clothing. The purchases made are clothing and shoes only.

Carol Coram, Rotary member and Vice Principal at Denny International Middle School said, "It's an esteem builder and it definitely levels the playing field. When they can come to school dressed really nicely in new shoes and new pants and jackets and dresses like a lot of other kids are they feel good about themselves. When you feel good about yourself, everything else is going to fall into place."

Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority member Makela Steward said she was there to, "Help the babies out (...) There's always someone who's in a worse predicament than you are and if you can get up and help somebody, it doesn't cost you any money, just a little bit of time and it makes kids smile." She explained that she was speaking to some of the fraternity members and, "a little boy passed me and the first thing he said was, 'I'm glad somebody's here who looks like me. That makes up for everything. That made the morning."

Josh Sutton, Executive Director of the West Seattle YMCA and Rotary Club member said, "It's a transformational experience for some of the adult shoppers to take these kids out and to have a hands on experience helping somebody out. Then just to watch the kids get clothes, new shoes and they get to pick out what they like. For some of these kids that's not an experience they've had before."

The First Student bus drivers who were all volunteers too said, "It's our chance to give back. It's all about the kids."

This year saw a large turnout of volunteers, many of whom were from sororities and fraternities at the University of Washington, as a group called The Panhellenic Council.

This year the key partners were:

Sears with Deanne Tausher and staff
SODO Kitchen- Bon Apetite Management- Laura Wilkens and staff
Essential Baking Company
Macrina Bakery
Blazing Bagels
First Student Bus Company and it's drivers
West Seattle Rotary Club
Mercer Island Interact Club
Foster High School
West Seattle Congregation of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints
University of Washington Rotaract Club - Future leaders of our community
O'Dea High School -Juniors

From the National Panhellenic Council of Seattle:
Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority
Delta Sigma Theta Sorority
Sigma Gamma Rho Sorority
Sigma Beta Rho Fraternity
Alpha Kappa Delta Phi Sorority
Zeta Phi Beta Sorority
Alpha Phi Alpha Fraternity
Phi Beta Sigma Fraternity
Kappa Alpha Phi Fraternity
Omega Psi Phi Fraternity

The schools involved were:
Concord Elementary and Sharon Baez
Gatewood Elementary and Margaret Balderama
Pathfinder Elementary and Collet Swenson
Roxhill Elementary and Michelle Rain
Lafayette Elementary and Paula Murray
Alki Elementary and Nick Adams