What’s better than Google coming to volunteer in the Tenderloin Tech Lab during Google Serve Week? Google coming twice! The team arrived again on Friday, June 11th to lend a hand serving meals, visiting elders, and of course helping in the Tenderloin Tech Lab. Your care and compassion as a volunteers shines through. At St. Anthony Foundation volunteerism is always celebrated, remembered and valued.
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!
It was Week of Caring, and Wells Fargo Trade Services was working the Clothing Program. They sorted and hung donated clothes, enough to keep the Clothing Program’s doors open the next day.
The Clothing Program can be quiet work, most of it in the room behind the store. It’s an opportunity to talk to staff and ask questions, a good gig for chatting with co-workers while getting something done. But in spite of the quiet, it’s crucial. We’ve had days with no group help and it meant closing our doors early.
The same day, Chevron Energy Solutions staffed the Dining Room. The environment at St. Anthony Dining Room is almost the opposite of the Clothing Program: fast, furious, and noisy. The Chevron Energey Solutions group spends their days stretching energy efficiency, and it showed. They served meals and bussed trays and kept up with our demanding rate of 12 trays per minute.
“It was a great opportunity to work with an organization that has such a positive impact and influence within our SF community,” they told us. “All our volunteers had a wonderful time and said they would go back for future events.”
That’s good, because we intend to invite them back. There are several essential tasks that must be done before the holidays hit, and a whole menu of Holiday Projects that make it possible for us to celebrate with our guests.
Corporate work teams are an important part of our clever plot to win the hearts and minds of the entire city. They talk about their experience to the co-workers who couldn’t come. They come back with other teams: colleagues, church groups, families, friends. They come back on their own. They invite us to their workplace giving events and give us chance to tell yet more people why people get poor and what St. Anthony’s is doing about it. They organize co-workers to collect socks and toiletries and all those things we always run out of and always need.
We need the help. We want the friends.
If you want to organize a volunteer team at your company for a holiday project, call me at 415-592-2737 or email atrowbridge@stanthonysf.org.
Why is it that so many people who come to St. Anthony’s to help end up thanking US? The folks from Interaction Associates worked a shift in the Dining Room toward the end of the month (always the most hectic time), thanked us profusely, and are coming back for more.
In many ways, it’s not a mystery. Most people like St. Anthony Foundation once they get in the door. That’s when they discover that all the talk about community at St. Anthony’s isn’t just talk.
And it helps that IA is in the people business. They train leaders in group process, facilitation, and collaborative cultures. Their workshops help companies build teams, grow leaders, navigate change, and increase corporate responsibility.
Three of their values on a list of 7 are “stakeholder voice,” “social responsibility,” and “human dignity.” This sounds familiar.
Interaction people intended to leave early for a team pot luck instead of the usual lunch with our guests, but when the time came, it was hard to get them out of the Dining Room. We had urged a short reflection session on them, very short, to accommodate their schedule, but they just kept, well, interacting.
They want to come back to make gift bags for Dining Room guests. They’ve already collected 200 pairs of new socks and 100 sets of unopened toiletries. We’re talking together about a possible fundraising event.
The email that explained all this to me ended “Once again, THANK YOU…THANK YOU…THANK YOU and we are very excited about helping out in the future.”
I’m not confused. I understand how it feels down there in the Dining Room. But this is my chance to say, “Thank you, friends, and thanks to Interaction Associates for taking the time.”
Earlier this month, Silicon Valley’s very own Google came by to volunteer during a day of computer repairs and training at St. Anthony’s Tenderloin Tech Lab.
St. Anthony Foundation has had the privilege of partnering with members of the corporate community for many years. We have worked with a variety of corporate service projects from company wide service days to individual volunteers offering time and professional skills through their company. Corporate volunteers have served meals in our Dining Room, planted gardens in our residential programs, conducted mock interviews in our Employment Program and hosted bingo games at our senior center.
To inquire about your company partnering with St. Anthony Foundation contact the Justice Education/Volunteer Advocacy Manager, Angelina Cahalan, at abcahalan@stanthonysf.org or (415) 592-2727.
Employees of Google, the Silicon Valley internet giant, are crossing the chasm to help their Bay Area neighbors by hosting a Neighborhood Computer Help Day in San Francisco’s Tenderloin. On Thursday, June 11th, from 1:30 p.m. to 4 p.m., Google employees will be volunteering to teach classes and do one-on-one tutoring with homeless and economically challenged participants of the Tenderloin Tech Lab, a collaboration between St. Anthony Foundation and Network Ministries. This is reflective of the trend that St. Anthony Foundation volunteer program is seeing, of more and more technologically savvy Bay Area residents reaching out to share their skills with the disenfranchised.
“Today’s economic crisis is running counterpoint to the technological crisis in areas like the Tenderloin, where the decreasing number of resources and services are forcing people to be more savvy about their survival. Technological access is proving to be the unlikely thread that is holding marginalized people together by connecting them to information, services, and each other,” noted Karl Robillard, Manager, of St. Anthony Foundation’s Employment Program & Technology Lab. “The interesting thing is that as the technological literacy of the poor and marginalized community is increasing, so is the interest in skilled technology volunteers, such as the employees of Google. This parallel reflects an unprecedented possibility of a narrowing technological chasm in the face of bleak economic times. That in and of itself is remarkable.”
ST. ANTHONY FOUNDATION
Since 1950 St. Anthony Foundation has addressed root causes of poverty with compassion. St. Anthony Foundation’s programs offer gateways to escaping poverty by addressing immediate needs such as hunger and clothing, as well as long term needs such as employment, drug and alcohol addiction, and physical and mental health. St. Anthony Foundation does not accept any federal, state, or local government money, and is entirely funded by private donations.
WHEN: Thursday, June 11th, 1:30 p.m. to 4 p.m.
WHAT: Google’s Technology Day in the Tenderloin
WHERE: Tenderloin Tech Lab, 150 Golden Gate Ave @ Leavenworth, 3rd Floor, San Francisco