Prior to the 2017 fire disaster in Sonoma County, the core services offered through Catholic Charities of the Diocese of Santa Rosa focused primarily on homelessness and housing, emergency shelter, and street outreach work. The organization also offered immigration and naturalization services, which assists people...
The Sonoma Environmental Education Collaborative (SEEC) is a regional consortium of environmental education professionals from various organizations, agencies, networks, and school districts, whose mission is to create vibrant and innovative collaborations that increase environmental literacy with Sonoma County students. SEEC developed a strong membership of educators...
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...
The seeds for LandPaths were first planted in 1996, and the organization's mission was simple: foster a love of the land in Sonoma County. Since those early days some twenty-five years ago, LandPaths has acquired and preserved roughly 2,000 acres of parks and open space for...
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...
In 2019, we launched a unique partnership with two other funders, First 5 Sonoma County and the Healthcare Foundation of Northern Sonoma County, to launch Resilient Organizations: Sustainable, Impactful, Effective (ROSIE). The ROSIE program was established to provide grant funding and peer collaboration opportunities for...
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...
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...
When Elece Hempel, the Executive Director of Petaluma People Services Center (PPSC), first realized the pandemic would impact the organization’s services, she met with seniors who frequent their Senior Café. Although she assured them meals would still be available (through pick-up instead of in the...
Erica Diamond began volunteering with California Homemakers Association ten years ago after witnessing the problems and suffering in Sonoma County’s low-income communities. “I wanted to do everything that I can to address the root causes of poverty,” she says. “And I found that CHA was organizing the low-income...