This is a long one, another cuppa might be in order. Enjoy!
Friday was an opportunity to understand in part what United Way Bay Area (UWBA) was about, why the UWBA employees are so passionate! Over the past 3 weeks we had heard so much about Sparkpoint Centers, just one of the many services that UWBA provides. So it was a field trip of the interesting kind!
Heading out for a field trip required a Cable Car ride down California Ave, catching a train experiencing the BART public transport, out to Richmond. This trip provided an opportunity to see the landscape change from the inner city to suburbia as we all wondered what was ahead for the day. In Richmond, we were met by Nicole, Meghan and Ansa (Atlas Fellow) where we were to pile into the cars and continue on. This field trip provided an opportunity to get to know our hosts a little more, asking lots of questions about UWBA, and to understand the passions of why they do what they do.
Train trip selfies and the wall art at the Richmond Station.
First stop was the Contra Costa County Sparkpoint Center. The role and service of a Sparkpoint Center is to be a one-stop assistance for low-income families and individuals to help them become financially stable, which includes high wage job training, and debt and credit counseling.
Meghan is leaving UWBA, with next week being her last week. But she is certainly not going to be too far away from UWBA, as she spreads her knowledge and passion at her new work location … the Contra Costa Sparkpoint Center in Richmond. She will be the new Site Co-ordinator for the area, touching many lives at the ground level. Meghan will be using an ECM database entering key data that flows into UWBA, that helps to see and report on the important work that the Center is doing to support the families. She will be a great role model for all the Sparkpoints in the local surrounding areas.
A short tour by the energised and passionate Regina, together with Nicole, provided a real insight to the services that the Center provides for the low income families such as a space for Tech Hub where people can learn computer skills. The Center also provides a space for legal support service, credit and financial counseling and career coaching and connection to other financial services.
This cheque from Chevron, one of UWBA’s partners, proudly hanging on the wall and spoken of. It provided the important funding back in 2011 to get the Center up and running. Also acknowledged, was The City of Richmond donates the space for the Center to run their services out of which means what the Center saves on rent, goes back into the community. With the support of partners like this, it is helping the mission of breaking the cycle of poverty in the Bay Area.
A group picture with Regina, Meghan, and Ansa (Atlas Fellow). Regina did a wonderful job in explaining all about the services provided by this Sparkpoint Center. Her enthusiasm and passion was evident. Regina has been researching ways on further helping low income families with getting into affordable housing in the area. She even spoke about an initiative that was happening that she thinks could easily be implemented here in the US for the thousands of low income families. She handed over a document that she had printed out which I read with interest. ICON has developed a method for 3D printing a single story 650-square-foot house out of cement in only 12-24 hours using a Vulcan printer for about $10K. If all goes to plan, a community will be made up of about 100 homes for residents in El Salvador next year. Regina thinks why not here! She would love to work with someone, anyone, to get this going in the Bay Area! When she shared this with us, I thought it was worthwhile mentioning here in the hope that it might help Regina’s dream if someone was to take on the challenge!
Next site visit was the Napa Sparkpoint Center which is part of a local school community. Here we met with Lupita, Ligia, and Maria. Again, the passion evident! SparkPoint Napa provides collaboration between On The Move, Phillips Elementary School and Napa County Health and Human Services, to bring more resources, connections and opportunities to the low income families in the Neighborhood.
Here Lupita and Ligia share the type of services they provide to the community with the help from four parent interns, and partnerships such as with On the Move organisation, on important areas such as:
- being a VITA site providing a service to help families prepare and complete their yearly income tax W2 documentation.
- Medi-Cal application support to obtain medical insurance
- Citizenship Legal Services that helps legal permanent residents become U.S. Citizens at a low cost
- Citizenship classes and tutoring
- Support for other services such as emergency funding in the recent fires that were in the Napa Region.
- helping to bridge parents with the local school, organising parent / teacher conferences to support their children.
- run programs such as how parents can teach their children the value of the $$, healthy and affordable meals, how to purchase a vehicle (which provides necessary skills on how to calculate their monthly payment, understanding dealership charges, what is a down payment and interest, and getting car insurance), English classes, etc.
Later in the afternoon, we were able to visit and see some of the local employment areas, enjoy a good ole California Burger experience for lunch, and visit a couple of wineries. Napa County is north of San Francisco, in California. As we were driving around the local area, we were able to see many hillside vineyards in the Napa Valley wine region, and good markets with regional gourmet food. There is also a Napa Valley Wine Train which is a vintage locomotive and traveling restaurant that runs through the valley. This whole area is where these types of places that we saw, provides a wide range of seasonal work for a lot of the local families in the area. Being seasonal, means that families have to save hard during the on seasons, to ensure that there is money to get through those off seasons.
The Wine Restaurant Train
Nicole and I amongst some beautiful flowers and garden.
Sutter Home Winery has been around since late 1800s. Sutter Home Winery is one of the largest family-run independent wineries in the United States, and is the estate known for the creation of White Zinfandel.
Front – Benedicte and Meghan; Middle – Ricardo and Nicole; Back – Susannah and Ansa
The day was finished late with dinner at an interesting and popular Italian Pizza Bistro – BOTTO. There was an interesting story behind this little place, where the owners took on a company that provided reviews – Yelp! As the owners were not interested in being part of the “Yelp Community”, Yelp retaliated by adding an algorithm that put the worst reviews as first. To not be outdone by this, the Owners turned this around to their advantage, they put up that people would get a free pizza initially for adding a 1 star rating which has ended up being a melt down for Yelp. Now it has become the norm, you visit BOTTO’s, you add a 1 star review. So far as advertised on BOTTO’s website is:
THE YELP VAFFANCULO METER
A daily count to all the one star reviews the idiots at Yelp are removing
from our profile. It’s going to take them a while
LIVE UPDATE SO FAR 2,993
Love the story, Authentic Tuscan cooking with attitude, also specializing in getting the worst reviews on Yelp! So meet one of the Executive chefs Davide Cerretini, Michele Massimo was in the kitchen cleaning up at the time of this picture. These 2 passionate partners and chefs make the best pasta that we have all experienced … trusting our hosts Meghan and her partner “Don” (as nicknamed by the Chefs), they ordered our meals which were divine!
BOTTO’s menu and signage made me giggle!
As the UWBA Sub Team got into an Uber at the end of the wonderful day, we took time to reflect on the amazing day we had. It was awesome to get out and to see the Sparkpoint Centers, to meet the awesome people working in these centers, to meet the locals! Thanks to Nicole and Meghan for taking us around to experience another side of San Francisco.
Sharon Tunley 