Brunch with Santa fundraiser helps Prevent Child Abuse Hawaii

Scrambled eggs and Santa, Portuguese sausage and Pikachu, smoked bacon and Storm Troopers all will be part of the 30th annual Brunch with Santa being staged Saturday by the nonprofit Prevent Child Abuse Hawaii.

In the early days of the brunch, the organization’s volunteers cooked the food themselves, but it has been professionally catered for many years, said Aileen Deese, Prevent Child Abuse Hawaii executive director.

It is the organization’s big annual fundraiser, and Pomaika‘i Ballrooms at Dole Cannery “is a nice place … to bring in a lot of children” for the activities and fun PCAH has planned, she said.

There will be some 20 different actors dressed as princes and princesses, superheroes, snow queens, “a lot of the fairy tale characters … and we also have our own costumes,” she said. “Someone donated Elmo and Tweetie, and oh gosh, it’s so much fun.”

Members of the Roosevelt High School Leo Club, sponsored by the Chinatown Lions Club, volunteer to dress up in the costumes and interact with the children that PCAH serves. “They’ve been volunteering for decades,” Deese said.

The popular Pacific Outpost of the 501st Legion, a volunteer, nonprofit organization that makes appearances wearing “Star Wars” Imperial Storm Trooper costumes, also will be there to pose for pictures with those in attendance.

“We have magicians and arts and crafts and face-painting, games, a bake sale, our board members do the bake sale, and there’s picture-taking with Santa and all the kids. It’s free picture-taking, and the kids get a gift,” she said.

While some of the families pay their own way to attend the brunch, “we usually have about 400 to 450 … and hopefully about half are sponsored” by donors who buy tickets so children and their families can attend for free.

Those types of donations have been slow this year, Deese said. (To contribute, visit www.preventchildabusehawaii.org, or call 951-0200.)

“Our first priority is abused children and foster families,” and children from abuse shelters and it is possible other agencies’ clients will be invited “if we have extra,” Deese said.

There is no charge for children 2 and younger, but they will not have a seat without a ticket purchase. High chairs and booster seats are not guaranteed, but families can bring keikis’ strollers and their own cameras to the event.