Features
Community Foundation and Healdsburg Farmers' Market Join Forces to Improve Local Nutrition
Healdsburg CA, July 7, 2011 -- Community Foundation Sonoma County and the Healdsburg Farmers’ Market are teaming up to encourage Healdsburg area residents on low incomes to eat more fresh local produce.
The joint project announced today allows the Farmers’ Market to expand their “market match,” or incentive, to CalFresh consumers. CalFresh, managed by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, is a benefit program (once known as food stamps) that provides food to needy individuals and families.
Starting July 9, consumers using a CalFresh Electronic Benefit Transfer (EBT) card at the Healdsburg Farmers’ Market will be able to get an additional token worth one dollar for every CalFresh dollar they spend, up to $20.
“The Community Foundation’s partnership with the market is designed to foster a connection between local shoppers, farmers and people in need,” said Stuart Harrison, a Healdsburg Area board member with the Foundation.
Processed, pre-packaged foods high in sugar, salt and fat can seem to satisfy one’s hunger but lead to many negative health consequences. For example, according to the American Heart Association, one out of three American young people is overweight or obese.
“We are making locally grown fruits and vegetables more accessible to people who need a little assistance in purchasing healthy food at this time in their lives and in our economy,” said Mary Kelley, manager of the Healdsburg Farmers’ Market. “Our aim in working with the Community Foundation is to supplement limited budgets to include more nutritious fresh foods.”
“In addition to helping fund the program, Community Foundation volunteers will ask Farmers’ Market patrons to chip in and help their less fortunate neighbors share in the market’s amazing bounty,” added Harrison.
CalFresh EBT matching funds are available at the Saturday and Tuesday Healdsburg Farmers’ Market from the market manager’s table.
Nourishing Connections
When Ren Nelson of La Gioia Fund – a donor-advised fund of the Community Foundation ─ expressed an interest in supporting an innovative community-based organization in Sebastopol, our philanthropic services team responded quickly and implemented a strategy to help her. Along with Ren’s financial advisor Bruce Dzieza of Willow Creek Financial Services, we established a challenge grant of $50,000 to benefit the Ceres Community Project. Gifts to the Ceres Project received through June 30th will be matched dollar for dollar, up to $50,000.
On June 23rd, the Community Foundation and donors Reuben Weinzveg and Padi Selwyn will host a house party to benefit the Ceres Community Project. Again, donations made at this event will be matched dollar for dollar, thanks to the generosity of Ren Nelson.
The Ceres Community Project was founded in March 2007 with a dual purpose: to teach young people how to cook and eat for health, and to provide nourishing prepared meals for individuals and their families throughout Sonoma County who are dealing with cancer and other life-threatening illnesses.
In the past four years, Ceres Community Project has engaged nearly 400 teens from 30 Sonoma County schools and provided 82,000 meals for clients from Cloverdale to Petaluma, Bodega Bay to Kenwood and Sonoma. The organization has just begun the remodel of a 3,000 square foot facility that will enable them to triple their impact over the next few years.
Ceres Community Project is currently leasing 18 hours a week of kitchen time in a commercial kitchen in downtown Sebastopol; they have been near capacity for the last year. The city of Sebastopol has offered them a 2,650 square foot building but it is in need of renovation. The cost for this project is $350,000 of which $237,000 has been raised. The new site will enable them to nearly triple the program over the next two to four years, from 30 to about 75 teens each week, from 45 to 120 clients families a week, and from 26,000 to 80,000 meals a year for Sonoma County residents.
To learn more about the Ceres Community Project or to support this effort contact Miguel Ruelas at 579-4073 ext. 19.
Featured Fund: LandPaths' Bayer Farms
With a history of connecting people to the land through public access and property stewardship, LandPaths recently opened a new kind of portal for alleviating our “nature deficit disorder.” When they took on Bayer Farm in the middle of Roseland, they asked, “Why aren’t we growing food on our parklands?” Their expanded vision combines the benefits of a rural farm and urban park. The six acres now provide needed green space, abundant food gardens, nature-based youth programs and an outdoor place for community celebrations.
Cultivated with donor-advised funds from the Community Foundation, the farm broke ground in August 2007. Door-to-door neighborhood outreach by Project Coordinator Magdalena Ridley (a native of Roseland) sparked enthusiastic interest and familial volunteering. Local kids took to it and Community Action Partnership’s YouthBuild program pitched in to help with planting. Showing off an amazing October harvest, a widely-attended fall fiesta celebrated the creation of a new kind of Roseland gathering place.
Think of victory gardens and community-building, with bilingual interpreters at meetings so that everyone feels included. Imagine neighbors streaming through streets drawn by the aromas of garden-grown vegetable quesadillas and the music of multi-cultural dances on a hay bale stage. Envision a walk-to summer camp, farm animals and “dirt mentoring” for youth. Bayer Farm is modeling an approach to healthier urban neighborhoods where “no child is left inside.”
Featured Fund: Roseland University Prep
Gail Ahlas, Roseland School District Superintendent, and Principal Amy Jones-Kerr co-founded Roseland University Prep to meet parents’ requests for a college-focused curriculum. Their vision of making college not only a possibility but a probability is reflected in the remarkable 97% graduation rate. RUP has two funds at the Community Foundation: an organization fund and its scholarship fund. Many 2008 graduates will receive college aid through RUP and other Community Foundation scholarships.
When RUP students proudly lead campus tours, they describe how high academic standards, strict, yet big-hearted discipline, encouragement from the President of Sonoma State University and an actual college dorm stay prepare them for higher education. They speak about the value of “adult time” with teachers and how they hope to return to mentor younger students. Aspirations clearly paint their vision for a brighter future. This innovative public charter school is raising its own aspirations even higher with dreams of a new building, soccer field, more counselors, fundraising assistance and additional mentoring volunteers.
Featured Board Member Jeannie Schulz
“There’s never enough money to solve all the current pressing community needs,” says Jeannie Schulz, founding board member who helped design the blueprint of the Community Foundation. “In the early days, the board focused on creating an unrestricted endowment; we did everything we could to encourage a wide donor base.”
Jeannie credits the 1995 Charles DeMeo gift for much of the growth and visibility of the young Community Foundation, along with funds from the National Endowment for the Arts received from 1989-1992, which matched money raised locally. She utilizes the professional staff whose community knowledge and diligence helps her judge the best places to put her contributions.
“Most people have to be taught about stewardship and philanthropy,” says Jeannie Schulz. “To go beyond the instinctual part of giving takes thoughtful effort.” Like her passion for trapeze, Jeannie’s philanthropy is daring and bold. She’s excited about young people who bring a new spirit to civic engagement by using the nonprofit arena as a place for creative change. “I’m aware that by being on a board, I’m not in the trenches. I’m very grateful for those who are doing it, because they are the bridge for me to touch others.”
Harry P. and Helen B. McStravick Fund for the Homeless
Helen McStravick’s commitment to caring for those in need spans her lifetime and continues today through her donor-advised fund with the Community Foundation Sonoma County. As a girl growing up in the 1920s with an Irish Catholic mother, Helen was drawn to the Church and a life of service to others. In the late 1940s, she became a nun, went on to receive a masters degree in social work and spent the next fifteen years in Honolulu working with pregnant teenagers, single mothers and orphans.
By 1970, her beliefs had shifted away from some core Catholic teachings: “I couldn’t say divorce was wrong; I couldn’t say birth control was wrong; I couldn’t say abortion was wrong.” Helen made the difficult decision to leave her life with the Church. She moved to San Francisco where she began working at a mental rehabilitation center. At the same time, she rekindled a friendship with a high school classmate and fell in love with her friend’s older brother, Harry McStravick. His connection to her past made their courtship fuller and more wonderful, and his passion for improving the lives of the homeless and mentally ill dovetailed perfectly with her life’s work. Harry’s youngest daughter had been diagnosed in high school with paranoid schizophrenia and still lives with a severe—so far incurable—mental illness.
After Harry’s death in 2001, Helen has continued to make grants from their donor-advised fund to support the mentally ill homeless population in Sonoma County, and she will leave the remainder of her estate to do the same. It’s comforting as she grows older, “a gift for me,” she says, and a way of honoring her husband’s wishes and extending her reach in the community.
Featured Fund: The Ellman Fund
George and Phyllis Ellman are models for leading a passionate life. George invented the Ellman Reagent, a testing method which is now standard lab procedure for measuring enzymes and proteins. Like his love of science, his civic zeal led him to serve as mayor of Tiburon, advocate for a sustainable Sonoma County transportation plan and help Greenbelt Alliance set urban growth boundaries. His delight in playing the piano and harpsichord caused him to co-found the Sonoma Classical Music Society. George’s wife Phyllis was passionate about native wildflowers and open space preservation. Tiburon’s Phyllis Ellman Trail loops by Calochortus tiburonensis, the rare Mariposa Lily which she helped save.
In 2007, George and Phyllis discussed how to make a meaningful legacy gift that would support their life-long passions for the environment, environmental education, historic preservation and classical music. Through a trusted friend, they learned that the Sonoma Valley Fund (SVF) could provide the bridge between their needs and their dream. They could benefit from the financial stewardship of the Community Foundation, and the SVF Grants Committee could evaluate and award grants in their specified areas of interest.
The Ellman Fund’s annual grants, totaling $25,000, were begun in 2008 and will continue each year. “We hope our fund will illustrate the possibilities offered by SVF and serve as a catalyst for others to activate their giving,” says George.
“There’s never enough money to solve all the current pressing community needs,” says Jeannie Schulz, founding board member who helped design the blueprint of the Community Foundation. “In the early days, the board focused on creating an unrestricted endowment; we did everything we could to encourage a wide donor base.” More…
In 1995 when former Santa Rosa Mayor, Charles "Chop" DeMeo chose to leave his $16 million estate for the benefit of Sonoma County teens and homeless mothers, he knew he would be creating a bridge to the future. His legacy, the DeMeo Teen Club, a supporting organization of the Community Foundation, is a perfect example of creating something lasting value that spans generations