Believe in the Dream gala benefits LIME Foundation

The construction industry offers important, challenging, well-paid and satisfying work to young people who are motivated and trained.

Helping to guide disadvantaged Sonoma County youth to careers in the building trades is a central mission of the LIME Foundation, host of a spirited fundraiser Thursday evening at the Luther Burbank Center for the Arts.

Remarks by a young woman named Kerry Smith struck a high note at the Believe in the Dream Gala. A graduate of the nonprofit’s NextGen Trades Academy, Smith works now for the BC Engineering Group.

Other young men and women have completed the LIME Foundation’s vocational academy and gone on to work in roofing, solar, general contracting and other construction-related fields.

Thursday’s gala kicked off with a wine reception on the LBC’s new patio. Then everyone moved inside and took a seat for a dinner by Pacific Connection Catering & Event Design.

The nonprofit’s founder and CEO, Letitia Hanke, spoke of the NextGen Trades Academy and its sister programs. One enhances young lives through music and technology and the other helps seniors become healthier, more active and engaged.

After dinner, guests raised their hands to make donations for sustaining the LIME Foundation, which Hanke named, backwards, for her son, Emil.

Hanke and her colleagues and supporters had hoped the gala would bring in $50,000. It raised $103,000.