These programs have ended. We're proud of every one of them, and they shaped how we work today.
We paid school fees, uniforms, and books for children whose families could not cover them. Sponsors were matched with a student and stayed with them year to year. The work now lives on in A Teacher Per Village in Sierra Leone.
The name also survives in our UC Berkeley partnership, which lets student volunteers earn college credit. See volunteering.
Volunteers cooked and handed out hot plates to neighbors living outside and to families between paychecks. Meals went out on a set night each week from our Oakland hub. Today that food goes out as meal kits with the weekly grocery run.
We paid for midwives to be trained so births in their villages would be safer. Each one went home and kept delivering babies in her own community. The lessons from it went into the clinic we run in Yaoundé.
When Afghan families arrived in the Bay Area, we met them with furniture, food, and help finding their way around. Volunteers who spoke Dari and Pashto sat with families through paperwork and first appointments. The families we met then are neighbors now.
We ran hiring drives so people in our own neighborhoods got the paid Census jobs. Being counted decides how much money comes back to a community for schools, clinics, and food programs. Local people did the counting, and local people got the paychecks.
After a fire in Millbrae, we raised money and gathered supplies for the families who lost their homes. Donations went straight to rent, clothes, and replacing what burned. It started and finished in a matter of weeks.
We opened vaccination clinics inside community centers people already trusted, with staff who spoke their languages. Anyone could walk in, with no insurance and no questions about status. When the county clinics could carry it, we handed the work back.
Free weekly groceries, a campus in Sierra Leone, and a clinic in Cameroon.