The Kingston Cove Yacht Club Helen Meredith Community Service Award is given to a community member who has made a significant difference to Kingston by leadership, active participation in and distinguished service to the community.

The recipient of the 2020 Kingston Cove Yacht Club Helen Meredith Community Service Award is Kim Francisco-Clark. Kim owns and operates a successful restaurant and catering service, The Ale House. She volunteers for the Kathleen Sutton Fund and the Kingston Cove Yacht Club and is a member of the Kingston Events Committee. The success of the business stems from her caring and supportive attitude to her employees, customers, and community members.

Beyond providing a great dining experience for her customers, the restaurant serves as a platform to extend her caring culture to the entire community. This is evidenced by Kim’s:

• Community outreach, promotion and collaboration with many local businesses.
• Use of local businesses’ products in her restaurant.
• Collaboration with other organizations, including KCYC, Rotary and the Port of Kingston to donate the prepared food for the Community Meals at the Village Green.
• Donating food in any way she can in cooperating with the Kingston Food Bank
• Donating wine to the Kathleen Sutton event.
• Donating the Ale House Executive Chef, Andy, as a guest chef for multiple auctions.
• Donating food to Cheryl’s Celebration of Life.
  

• Embraced the challenge and revamped her menu and business model to include affordable family meals for take out.
• Did not miss a beat to get the restaurant functioning and her employees back to work.
• Raised funds and created a food distribution service as many of us lost our jobs. This service was continued through June as it came to its natural end. But at its peak, she was providing 80-100 bags of perishable and non-perishable food per week at no cost to the recipients.