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Volunteer. Learn. Lead.  
 HandsOn Bay Area Quarterly News August 2008
   
HandsOn Bay Area

Good News Update                                                                

2008 Accomplishments To Date: January - July


Community Projects: 1, 215 projects
Volunteer Hours: 17, 438 hours

TeamWorks Service Learning Series:
· Focus on Urban Farming & Food Accessibility
· Explore San Francisco
· Focus on Disability Awareness in San Francisco
· Tikkun Olam - Service-Learning & Food-Justice Program
· Explore the Silicon Valley


HOBA Update:
In May, HOBA said goodbye to its Executive Director, Jim Pitofsky. The Board has appointmented HOBA's current Program Director, Lou Reda, as Interim Executive Director.
Read more about HOBA's executive transition.

 
 

CEOs Gather to Discuss Innovative Corporate Citizenship Tactics  
 
 
 

 

Written by Oscar Fabián Reyes

 
   

CEO Speakers and Moderator: Benioff, Scher & Miramontes

  Bay Area corporate leaders gathered on June 12, 2008 to attend HandsOn Bay Area’s 2nd CEO Speaker Series. Hosted by Levi Strauss & Co. and moderated by Lou Miramontes, KPMG LLP, the series featured Marc Benioff, CEO and Chairman, Salesforce.com and Laura Scher, CEO and Chairperson, CREDO Mobile/Working Assets speaking about their company’s corporate civic engagement and social causes.

   
 

Marc Benioff highlighted Salesforce.com’s successful “1/1/1 model,” whereby the company contributes one percent of profits, one percent of equity, and one percent of employee hours back to the communities it serves. Laura Scher shared CREDO Mobile’s innovative "social-cause related" method explaining that 1% of CREDO Mobile’s total phone charges go to progressive nonprofit groups.

The CEO Speaker Series advances the dialogue among the Bay Area corporate leadership around corporate-civic engagement. By facilitating a dialogue among the corporate leadership in the Bay Area, HandsOn Bay Area supports companies as they initiate, encourage, manage, and assess their civic engagement policies.

Past CEO Speaker Series participants include Robert Hanson, President, Levi Strauss North America and Sheryl O’Loughlin, former CEO Clif Bar & Co., Co-Founder, President and CEO Nest Naturals Inc.

CEO Speaker Series sponsors are: Accenture, Presenting Sponsor; KPMG, Gold Sponsor; Adobe Systems, Inc. and Levi Strauss & Co., Silver Sponsors; and Full Circle Fund, Bronze Sponsor.

If your CEO is interested in speaking, or if your company is interested in sponsoring or hosting the series, please email Oscar Fabián Reyes, Corporate Relations Director at oscar@hoba.org.

   
   
 
   
 
(Speakers, CEOs and HOBA Board Members at the 2nd CEO Speaker Series)  
 
Google Has Their First Annual Volunteer Day of Service                    
 
 
 

 

Written by Christie Hicks

 
   

GoogleServe at Sacred Heart

  More than 1400 Google employees volunteered their time between June 16th and June 20th, at 24 different project sites, as part of GoogleServe 2008. GoogleServe is a global event, engaging volunteers from over 40 different locations and over 3000 Googlers. The theme of the event was ‘going green’ and included projects such as habitat restoration, beach and wetland clean up, a donation drive to “recycle” clothing, reusing industry discards in children’s educational    
 

kits, creating a mural out of out-dated computer parts and restoring health to our oceans by working with injured and sick mammals.

As an inaugural event, the turnout and results were amazing: 1400 volunteers worked an average of 3 hours each totaling 4,200 hours of work; the equivalent of one person working a full time job for more than two years. The value of the contributions of this event can be measured in many ways, such as acres weeded or kits built, but financially it adds up to over $71,000 in labor donated to Bay Area communities.

Here is a sense of what the Googlers experienced:

The "Intense Farming" project in Sunnyvale boasted these amazing results:


125 basil plants started
3 scarecrows hung

1500 ft of irrigation trench filled in

26 garden beds spread with compost

9 garden beds double dug (18 ft long)
5600 ft of drip irrigation laid out on the farm
6000 corn seeds planted
8 farm beds mulched
56 orchard trees mulched

Google Project Leader Mark Ball commented, “Blister-handed, sunburned-shouldered and dirty but with huge smiles we all piled back into our two buses at the end of the day. Doing physical work together, meeting folks from other groups and making a difference in the world made for lots of happy folks on our bus… This was one of the most fun things I have done at Google.”

For some Googlers, it was their first volunteer experience after relocating to the U.S. Not only did they find it a way to give back to the community, but also an avenue to build community within Google. “I would likely not have ever met her (a colleague) if it weren't for GoogleServe. This is just a good example of how serendipitous volunteering can be!” says one of the many first-time Google volunteers.

   
   
   
 

Google Volunteers hard at work at various projects in the Bay Area!

 

 

A Service-Learning and Food-Justice Program                    
 
 
 

 

Written by Dana Blecher

 
   

Tikkun Olam TeamWorks: Jews in the Garden (JITG) took place from March 30th through May 20th, 2008. The program had 20 participants, and a leadership team of six, which composed of four garden educators and two staff, one from HandsOn Bay Area (HOBA) and one from American Jewish World Service (AJWS).

The innovative program was a collaborative effort between HOBA and AJWS. It consisted of four service learning projects, one educational event, one Shabbat dinner and one final gathering. Together the team explored issues around gardening and food justice that included: demystifying “sustainability”, exploring eco-kashrut, spiritual composting, understanding the politics behind food access and availability, and urban gardening. Jewish garden educators were present at each project, worked alongside the group and led informal educational reflection sessions.

This program began a great partnership between AJWS and HOBA and the response to it was overwhelming. Upon surveying the team, three main themes became apparent as to why the participants enjoyed the program: people, learning and gardening. The participants enjoyed meeting other like-minded, bright, interesting, engaged peers and finding out about their lives. They were excited about the fact that there was large group of Jews interested in service learning, food justice and sustainability. And, the group liked working in local gardens, spending afternoons outdoors and seeing different communities being transformed through gardens. Additionally, through the integration of learning and action, the team enjoyed connecting the manual work of direct service to the spiritual basis of Tikkun Olam as the motivation for taking part in the program.

   

 

Spring 2008 Impact Grant Winners                                         
 
 
   
The Impact Grant is a program created with sponsorship by the Philanthropic Ventures Foundation. The Impact Grant is meant to allow HOBA volunteers a chance to give back to the community not just by volunteering their time but also by presenting a grant to the agency of their choice. Individuals who volunteer the most hours within a given period of time are rewarded with this grant. The additional dollars help these agencies partners fund special projects, purchase needed equipment, and turn wishes into realities.  The agencies are rewarded twice in this effort with both your generous time and with the Impact Grant.

Congratulations Spring Impact Grant Winners!
HandsOn Bay Area would like to thank the following volunteers for participating in the Impact Grant program and to congratulate them on their wins!

Keith Clarkson –  Volunteer with the Most Hours - $1250 – Glide
“They create lives by repairing them.”

Jalyn Travis – New Volunteer Award - $1250 – Save the Bay
“I am inspired by their hard work and long commitment to preserving amazing natural resources. I identify with and value their passion for making the Bay a cleaner and healthier environment for people and wildlife. Save the Bay brings local environmental issues to the forefront and provides avenues through which we can make a difference. Thanks Save the Bay!”

Michelle VanCurler – New PL Award - $1250 – Laguna Honda
"The residents of Laguna Honda are amazing people who deserve to experience all of the great things that San Francisco has to offer.  I hope that this grant will help the leaders of Laguna Honda provide more social events in the community, and more opportunities for the residents to feel young again."

It's not too late to compete for the Summer Impact Grant, click here for details!


   

 

Don't Forget to Sign Up for Be The Change Day!!                
 
 
   
Projects are already starting to fill up fast. Don't be left out. Click here to sign up today!

   




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HandsOn Bay Area
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Fax: (415) 541-7716
 
© 2008 by HandsOn Network.
  AN AFFILIATE OF Points of Light and Hands On Network