For six years, Steve Cline has spent the last weekend of April camping out near Farmers National Bank on Campbell Lane, enduring noise from the busy street and the storms that often battered his tent while he collected food and monetary donations for the Realtors Association of Southern Kentucky’s Hope for Homeless event.

Cline, a real estate agent for more than 25 years who is now with Berkshire Hathaway Realty, insists that volunteering at the annual event is its own reward.

“My wife and I have stayed every year, every night,” he said. “We enjoy it. It’s very humbling, and it kinda grounds you. It’s something we like doing, and it’s something I believe in.”

Providing food items to local children in need and to the HOTEL INC nonprofit organization while also raising awareness about homelessness certainly has its intrinsic rewards. But now, Cline and his 500 or so fellow Realtors Association members have a significant extrinsic reward.

At the Kentucky Realtors annual convention last month in Cincinnati, the Realtors Association of Southern Kentucky took home the Community Service Award for its work with Hope for Homeless. It was the first time the local Realtors Association had been recognized in the large association category.

“We put a lot of effort into this one big event,” said Ron Cummings, the current RASK president. “For the award, we competed against associations in Lexington, Louisville and northern Kentucky.”

RASK measured up to those large groups with a Hope for Homeless event that has grown each year. Cummings pointed out that this year’s event collected more than 500,000 servings of food, or roughly 50,000 pounds. That’s a big jump from the 8,500 pounds that were collected in 2013.

“We have pretty much doubled the amount every year,” Cummings said. “It’s going to be hard to double it now because it has grown so tremendously.”

The growth has allowed the event to have a greater impact on families and individuals living in poverty, Cummings said.

“About 70 percent of what we collect goes to school family resource centers in the seven counties that make up our association,” he said. “The rest goes to HOTEL INC. We also raise awareness of our homeless population. People don’t realize how many people are homeless locally.”

Cline, who was installed as Kentucky Realtors 2018 president at the convention, learned firsthand about homelessness at this year’s Hope for Homeless event.

“We had a homeless couple walk up to us at about 2 a.m.,” he recalled. “They were trying to get to New York. We listened to their story and decided they were legitimate. We pulled our money together and bought them bus tickets. We took them to get some clothes and luggage. They did make it to New York.

“That’s the first time we’ve had the opportunity to help someone like that. It was pretty rewarding and humbling.”

HOTEL INC Director Rhondell Miller, who regularly works with individuals without stable housing, has been able to make the donations from Hope for Homeless reach a large number of those people, thanks to another community partnership.

“This year we received $7,900 from Hope for Homeless,” Miller explained. “We took that on Double Dollar Days at the Meijer grocery store and were able to leverage that into $23,700 worth of food. We purchased enough to stock our food pantry for April, May and June. That’s wonderful.”

The other beneficiaries of Hope for Homeless, the region’s family resource centers, are putting the donations to good use.

“It’s a big help, especially since we get it toward the end of the school year,” said Amy Carter, family resource center coordinator at Dishman-McGinnis Elementary School in Bowling Green. “We take food to apartments and different places to make sure children aren’t going hungry.”

The Realtors Association plans year-round for Hope for Homeless, and the group is preparing for next year’s event with an Oct. 26 fundraiser called Glow Run. Held at Kereiakes Park, the 5-kilometer run/walk event will start at 6:30 p.m. that evening, with proceeds helping give a jump start to Hope for Homeless.