Treat Yourself- St. Anthony celebrates National Women Health Week with a day-long health fair for women.

Women often serve as caregivers for their families, putting the needs of their spouses, partners, children, and parents before their own. As a result, women’s health and well-being becomes secondary. As a community, we have a responsibility to support the important women we know and do everything we can to help them take steps for longer, healthier, happier lives.

On May 7^th , 2013 St. Anthony Medical Clinic is hosting Women’ Health Day to celebrate National Women’s Health Week.  The day will cover women’s breast health, nutrition, physical activity, and emotional health including education and resource building around issues of domestic violence and abuse.

We will collaborate with San Francisco General Hospital’s Mammo Mobile, which will provide screenings, Kaiser Permanente, Women’s Community Clinic and La Casa de las Madres, as well as St. Anthony’s own health care providers to offer a comprehensive program to the women of the Tenderloin.

It can be challenging to get low-income women into health services.  Many barriers delay or prevent accessing care, including linguistic and cultural differences, financial pressures, and the fact that most low-income women’s resources go to providing food and housing for themselves and their families leaving little money or time to devote to their own well-being. Low-income women face the same pressures most women face, but with far fewer resources to manage them.

The theme of the day is ‘Treat Yourself’ that that is that taking care of yourself is important for wellness, but also that caring for your self has additional rewards that ripple out to families and communities.

To make the experience complete, we will offer our attendees some additional gifts.  Sephora has donated make-up, perfume, skin care, and other “treatment” gifts to help us complete our wellness day.  These are items often completely beyond the reach of low income women and so important to women’s self-esteem.  The clinic staff are preparing healthy food from their own “recipe box” to share and printed recipes will be available for our guests.

A dedicated team from IBM came to St. Anthony Free Medical Clinic to assist with a much appreciated scrubdown!  IBM is celebrating its 100th anniversary and the whole company is out volunteering.  Way to go IBM!

Google volunteers swarmed St.Anthony’s today! They worked tirelessly serving meals and helping out at our Free Clothing Program. Thanks for the great work!

Thank you Stone and Youngberg who were in last week to volunteer. The Pantry makeover project was a great success and will help our clients access healthy and nutritious food. Well done!

This past Thursday, volunteers from Stone & Youngberg came to the Tenderloin Tech Lab to help out clients with some basic as well as advanced computer functions. The volunteers were also there to give advice to clients who were actively seeking employment – giving pointers on interviewing techniques, networking, and advancing the careers of those individuals already employed. All said and done there were about 20 clients who were there for assistance pair with 10 volunteers. A great turnout for a great event!

Charles Schwab Corporation calls a company-wide volunteer week every year. This year, one Schwab group called us. They trotted and sweated in the Dining Room, serving trays, sorted clothing at the Clothing Program, coached job seekers in the Tenderloin Tech Lab, and brought extra meal delivery help to our neighbors around the corner. They made it easier for one guest to wait in line; talking to people in Charles Schwab tee shirts distracted him from his fears.

Everyone knows that Charles Schwab Corporation helps people save, invest and manage their money and helps companies with retirement and stock plans. Individual employees also donate their time and talents throughout the year, in addition to volunteer week. Their focus is nonprofits that lift people out of poverty and improve the financial well-being of low-income people. Their specialty is financial literacy.

St. Anthony Foundation’s clothing supply is still moving straight through from donation to distribution. Charles Schwab employees organize company-wide food and clothing drives. Faces in the group lit up when we talked about the need for clothing. Our faces lit up, too, when we realized we’d struck a chord.

Then over the weekend I got this from a participant. “Hi, Alina. Thanks again for letting us join your community last week. It was an awesome experience. I’ll check into the idea of a clothing drive.” Imagine: financial wizards who focus on people in poverty and specialize in clothing drives.

Yesterday, volunteers from Charles Schwab came into the Tenderloin Tech Lab and helped both Drop-in clients and individuals from the Father Alfred Center, St. Anthony’s inpatient drug and alcohol rehabilitation program.

Volunteers were available for 2 hours to help folks learn the process of searching for jobs, e-mailing potential employers, and editing their resume and cover letters. The volunteers from Charles Schwab were able to pass on their computer knowledge while simultaneously learning how difficult it is for individuals with limited or no computer access to learn how to do what we consider “simple” tasks.

Yesterday’s event was relatively small from a numbers standpoint (4 volunteers, 7 students), but the relationships that were formed during these few hours is immeasurable. As was proven today, volunteering is quite humbling and very rewarding. It is our hope that the group volunteers from Charles Schwab come back and help out on a regular basis and become part of our faithful volunteer base!

A few months ago the folks at iProspect came through to St. Anthony Dining Room to volunteer as a corporate team. They were so moved by the work we do that they offered their support in the relaunch of St. Anthony Foundation’s website.

When they heard about the shortage of clothing at St. Anthony’s Free Clothing Program they were quick to start up a drive of their own, collecting 10 bags within two weeks!

“Our employees at Aegis Media and iProspect find St. Anthony’s to be an incredibly worthy cause. It is so rewarding to be able to directly impact the local residents of San Francisco through clothing drives, volunteering at the dining room, and utilizing our specialized skills to increase awareness.” said Shannon McCarty, Client Services Manager of iProspect.

Encourage your co-workers to clean out their closets this month for St. Anthony’s.

Stone & Youngberg is one of the oldest private financial institutions in the country, started right here in San Francisco. They’ve been in the city even longer than St. Anthony’s: 1931. They helped St. Anthony’s build our new facility at 150 Golden Gate.

Stone & Youngberg also supports their employees in volunteering with organizations and government agencies to make communities stronger. Earlier this month, 50 Stone & Youngberg employees converged at St. Anthony’s from San Francisco, Los Angeles, San Diego, Big Bear Lake, New York, Chicago, Phoenix, Albany, Annapolis, and Richmond, VA to help us out with just about everything AND the kitchen sink.

Some went to the Social Work Center where they researched and created recipes for clients utilizing the contents of the pantry. These recipes will be available for clients to take home with them to create healthy and balanced meals.

Some worked in the Tenderloin Tech Lab, providing one-on-one tutoring, tailoring their help to each individual. The room was abuzz with questions and conversation.

St. Anthony Free Medical Clinic is working on a huge database project that a group of Stone & Youngberg employees pushed several more steps toward completion.

They organized our green library to make it more user friendly. They volunteered in the clothing program sorting and hanging donations. And as if that were not enough, the company did a clothing drive and brought with them a very large donation.

They even volunteered to help us celebrate volunteers. St. Anthony’s Volunteer Appreciation Event was on the way, and Stone & Youngberg employees put together volunteer gifts, made centerpieces, and strung lighting for a Roaring 20’s party in honor of 200 regulars who keep the Dining Room and other programs running.

In short, the folks from Stone & Youngberg just kept throwing things into the pot. The result was the rich stone soup that is the St. Anthony’s community. And one industrious volunteer day.

Gymboree is in the business of children’s clothing, playtime, and music, but for the last two years they’ve been packing presents for adults, here at St. Anthony Foundation.

Gymboree employees are a lot of the reason we could give a gift bag to every person who came to St. Anthony Dining Room on Christmas Day. They donated the bags, colored hats, and chocolate bars, in addition to labels they had printed with “Happy Holidays.” They collected hundreds of travel size shampoos, bath gels, and lotions. Then they came in person to label and fill the bags with the ingredients they had brought, plus socks St. Anthony’s had been collecting for weeks.

The Gymboree values statement promotes making a difference, being creative, passionate, and authentic, and acting like a family.  “We care about one another,” they say. “We have a sincere respect for one another and we foster trust and camaraderie.  We like to have a good time and celebrate success.”

Twenty-two-hundred bags. Twenty-two-hundred very low-income people whose day was brightened by a special meal at St. Anthony’s and a present. Yes it was a useful present; practical. It was also colorful, warm, and unexpected. Like the sticker that said “Happy Holidays” and the chocolate bar in among the socks and bath gels.  It was a success to celebrate.

We tell groups who help us with Christmas projects that Christmas is the hardest day of the year for our guests. On other days, you’ll see a cheerfulness and sense of community you might not expect. But on Christmas, you just hope that whatever we can do sinks in by the day after and cheers people up.

This Christmas, it seemed to me our guests on the whole were in better spirits than I’d seen since I started here. More people wished me a merry Christmas or responded to my own “Merry Christmas” with a big smile; more people thanked me for one thing or another than I remember from previous years. Gymboree reminded us that that one day of kindness and thoughtfulness can make a difference; one gift on one day of the year. And don’t forget the chocolate.