Skating Benefits Homeless

Hundreds of ice skating fans filled Bright Hockey Center yesterday, but not for the Eliot House Evening of Champions.

Members of the Skating Club of Boston performed in the first "Put Your Heart in Our Place," a show organized by the Salvation Army to benefit Our Place, a Cambridge day care center for homeless children.

"We wanted to have something for children," said Sandra Hudson, chair of the Salvation Army Community Advisory Board. "We hope that the skating show will be an annual event." More than 3,000 tickets for the show were sold to area businesses and in turn distributed to Cambridge and Somerville schoolchildren.

Our Place will receive at least $17,000 for salaries and equipment from the performance, according to Capt. Stephen M. Carroll, commanding officer of the Cambridge-Somerville Salvation Army.

Carroll said The Salvation Army created Our Place in the late 1980s because "parents will continue to be homeless unless their kids have a place to go." Our Place now serves 27 homeless children, he said.

Leverett House and Neighborhood Development (HAND), the Cambridge Partnership for Public Education and area businesses also sponsored the event.

HAND provided volunteers for the show and hosted a post-performance reception for the skaters, Salvation Army planners, and student volunteers in the house's junior common room.

Judith A. Murciano-Goroff, a Leverett House public service tutor, said the Our Place benefit is a part of Leverett HAND's efforts to "address the needs of the community" and to "open the doors of Leverett to our neighbors."