In May, United Way gathered with community leaders from the North Vallejo Health Collaborative to celebrate the grand opening of a children’s health center at Vallejo’s Elsa Widenmann Elementary School. United Way provided a $100,000 grant to support the clinic. The grant is one of our many investments in Community Schools, which bring essential services to families and students on [...]
Teens Test New Skills During Playground Makeover
June 2, 2010 by
Solano Community College is now more welcoming to young families thanks to a recent playground makeover by a group of teens from Dreamcatchers, a United Way grantee that provides troubled youth with employment training. United Way supports Dreamcatchers as part of our strategy to empower the next generation for success. The makeover provided youth the opportunity to test [...]
Opening Doors to Brighter Futures
April 15, 2010 by
Jane is a single mother of five who first walked through the door of the Earn It! Keep It! Save It! free tax preparation site at Community Action Marin in 2009. United Way and Community Action Marin have partnered for several years on Earn It! Keep It! Save It!, offering free tax assistance and asset-building [...]
"I Don't Let Self-doubt Stop Me"
April 13, 2010 by
Here is an inspiring success story from United Way grantee Opportunity Junction: Mary Castillo had her life all planned out. She married her husband when she was 20 and spent the next 35 years staying home and raising their four children while her husband supported them. All of that changed when her husband was diagnosed [...]
West Marin Mom Blossoms as a Community Leader
March 24, 2010 by
Elvira de Santiago first learned about the Shoreline School Readiness program after giving birth to her fifth child in 2007. She took advantage of Shoreline’s insurance enrollment assistance, the car seat program and parent education workshops. United Way funds the Shoreline School Readiness program, a child-services collaborative that serves hundreds of families in West Marin, [...]
Making Kids Smile
March 18, 2010 by
Three-year-old Doug was recently referred to the PDI Surgery Center, a United Way grantee, after Baby Bottle Tooth Decay badly corroded his teeth. This kind of tooth decay is most often associated with young children who fall asleep with bottles in their mouths, allowing sugary liquids (juice and milk) to pool around their teeth. All told, Doug needed 11 teeth capped [...]
One Woman Finds Her Path
January 7, 2010 by
By the 9th grade, Leslie was reading at an advanced college level – and she was already an alcoholic. Caught in a downward spiral, Leslie turned to drugs, broke into people’s homes, spent time in jail, and eventually lost custody of two children. After spending several weeks in a recovery program, she was referred to [...]
SparkPoint Inspires Hope
November 2, 2009 by
Caroline Mack said she thought she was going to jail, because that’s what the creditors were telling her. Her husband took care of everything, so when he died two years ago, things quickly began to deteriorate for the 52-year-old mother of two. The Belize native said she’s not sure where she’d be now if she [...]
Fedex Employees Dig Volunteering
October 26, 2009 by
Last month, as part of Fedex Cares Week, a volunteer army of 125 local Fedex employees spent a day lending a hand at the Alameda Point Collaborative, a United Way grantee that is working to end homelessness. Fedex Cares Week is a week-long volunteer event that benefits local communities and United Way by encouraging more than 2,100 FedEx team members [...]
Opening the Door to a Brighter Future
October 23, 2009 by
At 17, Chris Black was living on the streets of San Francisco. Today, three years later, he works at a technology company, interns with a real-estate firm, and is pursuing a degree in computer science with aspirations to attend law school. Chris shares how MatchBridge — a youth employment project of United Way, and the [...]
