CHIMACUM — Lela Hilton saw an unique way to raise money for the Jefferson County Clemente Course, so she went out on a limb and contacted the producers of the “Says You!” game show that airs on National Public Radio.
“I e-mailed them, just because we’re fans and we’re just trying to do what we can for Clemente,” said Lela Hilton, academic director for the program, which provides free college humanities courses to low-income adults who otherwise might not get a taste of college education.
Her contact paid off.
The word game show is coming to Chimacum High School auditorium at 7 p.m. June 26 to tape two shows live to benefit the Bard College Jefferson County Clemente Course in the Humanities.
“It happened really fast, just over the Christmas season,” Hilton said.
Limited number of tickets
Most of the 500 tickets for the show tapings went on sale over the Christmas holiday season and have been sold online, Hilton said.
A limited number of tickets will go on sale at 9 a.m. Monday at Quimper Sound, 230 Taylor St., Port Townsend.
Hilton said auditions for local music performers for the taping session of two back-to-back shows will be announced later.
“Says You!” has been produced and hosted for about 10 years by Richard Sher.
It airs at 6 p.m. every Saturday on 94.9 KUOW-FM, a station located in the University District near the University of Washington in Seattle, and which broadcasts to Western Washington, including the North Olympic Peninsula.
Sher is president and founder of Pipit & Finch, a marketing and media development company with clients such as CBS/Westinghouse, Hearst Broadcasting and NPR.
He hosts a panel of six experienced writers, producers and broadcast performers who have fun with words, answering audience questions, solving puzzles and other categories.
They tackle word definitions in a playful, erudite, humorous fashion that is described as “not too high brow.”
Clemente Course
The Clemente Course provides students — at no cost to them — with tuition, books, childcare, tutors, transportation and access to such resources as the Washington State University Extension computer lab at Shold Business Park in Port Hadlock.
The five-month program promotes the fact that more than half of its graduates go on to attend two- to four-year colleges, with 75 percent of them getting off of public assistance within a year after taking the course.
Clemente, at www.jeffersonclemente.wordpress.com, seeks sponsors to defray costs of the programs and to raise some money to sustain Clemente’s students.
The program takes up to 25 local students and still has two openings for the coming session, said Hilton, who can be contacted at 360-732-0007 or hiltonl@olympus.net.
For the Jefferson County program, the Bard College works in partnership with Jefferson Education Foundation, the Jefferson Education Center, The Leader weeklynewspaper and Washington State University Learning Center.
For more information about “Says You!”, see www.saysyou.net.
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Port Townsend-Jefferson County Editor Jeff Chew can be reached at 360-385-2335 or at jeff.chew@peninsuladailynews.com.