Sharing our Abundance
Each month we share a percentage of the donations we receive with various "safety net" organizations in our community. They provide services for people with limited economic means: keeping them in their homes, providing food and other basic needs, helping them gain employment skills. We support seniors, families and youth. Organizations include:
Abilities United
Abilities United (formerly C.A.R.) has been serving people with developmental (Down Syndrome, mental retardation, autism, and cerebral palsy) and other disabilities who live in the Santa Clara and San Mateo counties since 1963. Each year the services are used by over 2500 people and their families. Clients include infants, children and adults with developmental disabilities and their families. A variety of lifetime services include reducing and preventing developmental delays, support for families and caregivers, aquatic services, teaching community living skills, job placement and support, and community education and partnerships.
Contact: 525 East Charleston Road, Palo Alto CA 94306.
www.abilitiesunited.org. Tel 650-494-0550 Fax 650-855-9710.
Linda Chin, Fund Development Director Linda@abilitiesunited.org.
Elsa Segovia Center
The Elsa Segovia Center is a one-stop day service center for homeless and low income women, children, and families. The center provides basic services such as groceries, free dental care, clothing, showers, laundry facilities, classes for parents, and activities for children. It also offers case management, counseling and therapy in collaboration with a number of agencies. Elsa Segovia Center is one of the many programs of Innvision, which addresses the multiple needs of people in transition. Innvision serves Santa Clara and San Mateo counties and serves more than 20,000 men, women, children and mentally ill adults each year at 20 different sites in Santa Clara and San Mateo counties.
Contact: Elsa Segovia Center, 795 Willow Road, 323D, Menlo Park, CA.
Phone 650-853-7066.
JobTrain
JobTrain helps clients launch new careers and break out of the community’s existing cycle of poverty, low education levels, homelessness, drugs, crime, and prison. Through each student’s personal and professional growth, JobTrain is creating a new and positive model for other members of the community. In its 43 years in the community, JobTrain has helped over 125,000 low-income individuals move toward a better life for themselves and their families. Teenagers earn high school credits and prepare for first jobs. Parolees learn valuable trade skills that put them on a new path. Welfare mothers launch new careers in which they are able to provide for their families on their own. Laid-off workers master the latest state-of-the-art skills to equip them for work in the most prominent industries in the Bay Area. Of last year’s graduates, 78% were placed in quality jobs, and 95% of these individuals were still working or had been promoted within 6 months of graduation.
Contact: 1200 O'Brien Drive, Menlo Park CA 94025, tel 650-330-6429,
www.JobTrainworks.org, email info@JobTrainworks.org,
Colette Rodgers crodgers@JobTrainworks.org.
Loaves & Fishes Family Kitchen
Loaves & Fishes is committed to providing free, nutritious meals and support services in a dignified, safe, and caring environment to the working poor, seniors, families, and the homeless. Today, in addition to hot meals, Loaves & Fishes provides outreach services including emergency assistance, food bags, social service referrals and soon a children's program. Started in 1980, the program now serves 250 meals daily, more than 50,000 each year. Loaves & Fishes is one of only two programs serving San Jose. After more than 29 years Loaves & Fishes Family Kitchen has moved from St. Patrick's church to a new home at InnVision's Montgomery Street Inn. With its own kitchen, the program can plan and cook more consistent meals. In addition Innvision can provide shelter, computer usage and caseworkers who can help people find jobs, education and housing.
Contact: Christina Egan: Christina@loavesfishes.org.
508 Valley Way, Milpitas, CA 95035. 408-934-4990. www.loavesfishes.org
Mother Branch and The E.P.A. Community Service Center
Mother Onedia Branch was born in 1919 and she has been helping people in need in East Palo Alto and Menlo Park since 1955. She collects donations of clothing and household goods year round and doubles her efforts through the holiday season, when she also collects food. She especially appreciates cash donations so that she can buy in bulk and help even more people.
Checks can be made payable to E.P.A. Community Services Center. For more information call 650-325-2824.
Pathways Hospice
Pathways' mission is to provide compassionate quality health care with comfort, independence and dignity. Pathways is a community-based not-for-profit health care organization. Patients may stay in their own homes, with family or friends, in assisted living facilities, or nursing homes while on Pathways Hospice service. We know that each person's care is unique, and that it's all in the details, whether recovering from surgery, learning to manage a chronic disease, or coping with serious or life-threatening illness at home. Compassionate, skilled end-of-life care is available to patients and families facing advanced illness, death, and bereavement, regardless of their resources. Our Pathways KIDS program provides palliative care to children with chronic and terminal illnesses. The On-Call Team provides 24-hour, 7-day-a-week care.
Contact: Pathways Hospice Foundation, 408-730-1200
or e-mail foundation@pathwayshealth.org
585 North Mary Ave, Sunnyvale, CA 94085
Rotacare Mountain View Clinic
Rotacare Mountain View Clinic provides free medical care to people who have the most need and the least access to medical services. Most patients work in low-paying jobs without health insurance, are unemployed, or are unable to afford care. Almost half of the patients are children and over half of all patients are female. Clinics are open 2 evenings each week and they are run like urgent care centers. Services include treating minor illnesses and injuries, referrals, managing chronic conditions, immunizations, free medications, school physicals, and health education. Clinics are staffed by volunteer physicians, nurses, pharmacists, social workers, and interpreters/translators. Clinics work with social service agencies in each community to provide follow-up and long-term care.
Contact: Rotacare Mountain View Clinic,
2400 Grant Road, Park Pavilion Building, Mountain View, CA 94040. 650-988-8200
Web: El Camino Hospital and www.rotacarebayarea.org/mountainview.html.
Email: my_rotacare@elcaminohospital.org.
Cheryl Canning, Director of Clinical Services.
Phone: 650-988-7652, Email: cheryl_canning@elcaminohospital.org.
The Transitional Program
The Transitional Program is a small but very effective supplemental program for people with "brain dysfunction", the preferred term for mental illness. The program is 25 years old and uses interns to help a wide range of clients, some of whom might be turned away from other programs as having too serious a problem. They take Medicare and charge clients on a sliding scale. The program treats 25-30 adult clients at a time, without any geographic criteria other than they be able to get to the program on their own. They also work with the Palo Alto Adult School to provide life skills classes.
For more information contact them at 650-324-3330
www.TransitionalProgram.org
Yesu Natamba Day and Boarding Primary School in Uganda, Africa
Yesu Natamba Day and Boarding Primary School in Uganda, Africa was started in 2002 to serve orphans and needy children and now serves 360 children with a staff of 14. A gift of $50 funds one child for a year. Uganda, a country the size of Oregon, has a population of 30 million with an average age of 15 and 2 million orphans. The country has been weakened by AIDS as well as by civil war on the northern border and by the years of turmoil under Idi Amin that ended in the '80's.
Launched as a personal mission by a teacher/Catholic priest after caring for orphans in his own family, the school is licensed by the government and includes 30 acres of donated land, classrooms, boarding facilities and a farm. The children receive health care and nutrition, education including economic/vocational skills, and the ethical foundation to function as productive citizens.