La Plaza launched into action in 2018, just one year after Sonoma County was hit by catastrophic fires and heading into some of our most challenging years with more fires, historic floods, and a years-long pandemic. Yet the nonprofit, a project grown from a leadership...
It's been just over five years since the Tubbs and Nuns fires changed life as we knew it in Sonoma County. We launched the Sonoma County Resilience Fund knowing that while the immediate needs would be great, our community needed a fund that would be...
In March 2020, everything changed. Nearly overnight, the nonprofit organizations that act as Sonoma County's safety net faced a crisis like no other: how to help the thousands of people who suddenly lost jobs or faced other economic hardships survive the widespread closures, how to...
The Covid pandemic presented numerous challenges to organizations serving low-income community members here and across the nation. Among those challenges was having enough emergency funds available for the surge in clients facing the loss of work and struggling to pay housing and utility costs. And...
For people living on the remote stretches of the North Coast of Sonoma County, it can be challenging to find social and other services. This reality, along with the sense of isolation that comes with rural living, was compounded while the nation sheltered-in-place during the...
Since local coronavirus infections were first detected in spring 2020, Sonoma County’s Latinx community has been disproportionately affected. Comprising roughly 30% of our population, Latinx people were hit with more than 60% of Covid infections over the last year. Although several local organizations worked to offer...
When Robin Bowen, Executive Director at Child Parent Institute (CPI) in Santa Rosa, first called her staff together to discuss the impact COVID-19 would have on the organization, she—like many others—wasn’t expecting the pandemic’s duration would last this long. “We just all thought it was going...
Fundraising can be tricky during a local disaster like a wildfire or flood. It can be even trickier during a global pandemic that spans an entire year and counting. COVID-19 and successive years of wildfires hit the Healdsburg and Geyserville communities hard. With grapes left...
One year into the pandemic, Community Action Partnership of Sonoma County (CAP) is still working tirelessly to meet the changing and growing needs of those most marginalized. While staff continually adapts to working and connecting with clients remotely, Assistant Director Kathy Kane says gaps remain...
In June 2020, about 10 Sonoma Valley civic leaders gathered in a backyard to discuss the future of Sonoma Valley. Roughly three months into the pandemic, the group was worried: How would small local businesses survive shelter-in-place orders? How would those who were now unemployed...