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Last year, giving to nonprofits was up by an average of 4.5% nationwide. But here in Santa Cruz, donations to the nonprofits participating in our holiday giving campaign Santa Cruz Gives grew by 19% in 2018 over the previous year.

The message has come through loud and clear: people in Santa Cruz County care about improving and uplifting their community, and they have chosen Santa Cruz Gives as a vehicle for being a part of that positive change.

So we are thrilled to announce that for 2019, we have expanded the number of local nonprofits accepted into the campaign. In previous years, we were wary of growing too fast, and overreaching beyond what this fledgling charitable project was capable of sustaining.

But you have sustained this effort, and driven it far more quickly than we imagined when we first conceived it. If we reach our goal of raising $300,000 between now and the end of the campaign at midnight on Dec. 31, then Santa Cruz Gives will have raised more than $1 million for local nonprofits in its first five years. That is an incredible testament to the spirit of giving in Santa Cruz County.

The bold growth of this program would not have been possible without our partners at the Volunteer Center of Santa Cruz County and Community Foundation Santa Cruz County, and our business sponsors Santa Cruz County Bank, Wynn Capital Management and Oswald.

Most of all, it would not be possible without you. So please give generously to our participating nonprofits. Read about all of them hereboth their mission statements and the projects they will fund with the money raised through Santa Cruz Givesthen go to santacruzgives.org, our easy-to-use website that lets you give conveniently and securely to all of your favorite causes.

Organization Mission: We create and support one-on-one mentoring relationships that ignite the power and promise of youth. We have served more than 7,000 local at-risk children, providing a crucial foundation at a critical time in their lives. Mentors make Santa Cruz County a safer and healthier place by helping children make better decisions, which increases their chances of staying in school and decreases their challenges with substance abuse, teen pregnancy and the criminal justice system.

Transgender Matching Program and LGBTQ+ Service Expansion

Our local agency, Big Brothers Big Sisters of Santa Cruz County, is the first and only agency in the entire nation to have a Trans Matching Program. We began matching transgender youth with volunteer transgender adult mentors in 2015. The program now serves as a national model.

Using our proven mentoring model, volunteers receive in-depth training on how to support these youth, who routinely face pervasive injustice, bias and mental illness in their daily lives. Research shows a quality mentoring relationship reduces the risk of suicide in the trans population by 50%.

We want to expand our efforts in the LGBTQ+ arena through training, roundtables and enhanced match support for all of our mentors, our matches and for other youth-serving organizations in the community. Discrimination and bias often begin in childhood, as LGBTQ+ youth explore their gender identites. They are at high risk of harassment, physical and sexual violence, and suicide. We work with this underserved population in close partnership with other agencies.

We grasp that gender identity can be fluid, and providing deeper support for all LGBTQ+ program participants will improve outcomes for youth we serve. Our volunteers are trained when first matched, and many matches last for well over five years. We must update our training so that long-term volunteers are prepared.

Organization Mission: The Bird School Project aims to inspire and equip both students and teachers to love, study and steward their local environment.

Creating Leaders for the Environment

In 2020, Bird School Project aims to unify youth leadership around a vision for lives that are relaxed, mentally resilient and less distracted.

The Bird School Project provides educational experiences to students directly on their schoolyards, making nature and a bit of wilderness easily revisited, leading to appreciation, inquiry and stewardship. Students grow an appreciation for the unexpected and a love for nature.

The main goal is to deliver a four-week, eight-lesson life science unit on birdingincluding guided, on-campus bird walks; use of binoculars; close examination of museum specimens; and the use of a field journal in which students learn to record their observations creatively.

Students build skills in focus, direct observation, meaning-making, arguing from evidence, and collaborating with peersand benefit further from the research-based, proven healing effects of time spent outdoors. Observations of real-time happenings in nature generate a sense of connection with other living organisms and lower stress about school, peer groups or family life among diverse youth.

We provide programming countywide, but focus in the Pajaro Valley on middle school students. Their school schedules allow for few opportunities for field trips, and programs like ours are needed to connect students with their environment.

Organization Mission: CASA of Santa Cruz County advocates for children, providing court-appointed volunteers so each child in the Dependency Court system feels cared for and connected with the people, families and resources they need to heal and flourish into adulthood. CASA empowers volunteers to directly influence life-changing decisions affecting children in dependency (foster) care.

Be the Voice for a Child in Foster Care

CASA of Santa Cruz is seeing more children under the age of 3 entering the foster-care system. This is where CASA comes in: We recruit, screen, train, and supervise volunteer advocates to work one-on-one with children and their families to support reunification or permanent placement into a safe and healthy home. Advocates get to know their childs situation and needs, help caregivers access resources to meet those needs, and advocate for the childs best interests in court, community and school settings.

They build strong relationships with the family and work with a CASA advocate supervisor to create an advocacy plan for their child. They provide regular reports to the court, which the judge relies upon to inform life-changing decisions for children in foster care.

Our advocates understand that children experience great trauma as a result of entering the foster care system, provide them with a warm layer of support, and connect them to resources to benefit their development and well-being. CASA is the only organization with volunteers officially sworn in by the court, acting as advocates for our areas youth.

When a case opens in Dependency Court, the focus is on the parents/caregivers gaining resources to help meet their case plan, but a CASA volunteer focuses on the child. While they may support the entire family, their priority is the child. Advocates are assigned to the childs case until the child is placed in a safe, permanent home and the case is dismissed.

CASA children have a higher rate of adoption than those without an advocate, are less likely to return to the system, are substantially less likely to spend time in long-term foster care, and are more likely to become healthy adults who break the cycle of abuse.

Organization Mission: The Coastal Watershed Council was formed to address the declining health of watersheds connected to the Monterey Bay National Marine Sanctuary, with a mission to preserve and protect coastal watersheds through community stewardship, education and monitoring. Since 1995, CWC has educated thousands of volunteers and thousands of students to monitor water quality, enhance habitat and protect the natural resources along our Central Coast.

San Lorenzo River Health Days

Santa Cruz formed because of the San Lorenzo River. The river remains our primary drinking water source, and is designated as a critical habitat for threatened and endangered species of fish.

Most locals agree that our community deserves a healthy river ecosystem surrounded by safe and inviting parks. With your help, we can make further progress toward a vibrant riverfront.

CWC is asking for support for River Health Days. We will engage volunteers, including youth groups and corporate teams, to remove invasive species and replace them with native plants.

In addition to improving ecosystem health, these community work days reintroduce families and youth to the river through meaningful, positive experiences in nature. Last year, 674 CWC volunteers contributed 1,782 hours of work and planted 2,120 native plants, replacing 6,450 square feet of ice plant.

Organization Mission: Community Bridges envisions a thriving community where every person has the opportunity to unleash their full potential. We believe that when we work together, anything is possible. Our family of 10 vital programs across 20 sites meets the needs of nearly 20,000 local children, families and seniors each year with essential services, equitable access to resources and as advocates for health and dignity across every stage of life.

Food Stability for Homeless Seniors

In 2017, 39% of homeless people in Santa Cruz County were over the age of 50, and 70% of homeless deaths were people over the age of 50. For the past five years, Meals on Wheels (MOW) for Santa Cruz County, a program of Community Bridges, has seen an increase in homeless senior participants at Louden Nelson Community Center.

While MOW has been providing meals five days per week to eligible older adults (more than 650 warm, nutritious meals per week), to address food insecurity among the vulnerable homeless population, we have begun to assemble weekend meal packs that provide at least two nutritious meals.

We are asking Santa Cruz Gives donors to join MOW efforts to ensure that no senior goes hungry, and support our goal to ensure that homeless seniors attending Louden Nelson will have nutritious meals on the weekends in 2020.

Funding will provide participants two shelf-stable mealsmeals they will not be able to receive otherwise because most dining facilities are closed on weekends.

Organization Mission: To create lasting oral health for underserved children and adults.

Give Kids a Smile Day

There is nothing quite like a toothacheit is all-consuming. Toothaches are the most common reason low-income children miss school, and theyre largely preventable. You can help make prevention more common than treatment, so that children are able to focus on school instead of a toothache.

Give Kids a Smile Day provides free dental care for uninsured kids who would otherwise fall through the cracksfamilies who dont qualify for public insurance and cant afford expensive or even discounted dental care. The need in Santa Cruz County is huge. Two out of three people with public insurance (and many more low-income, uninsured residents) are not receiving dental care.

Dientes aims to create healthy habits and positive experiences with the dentist. With your generosity, we can prevent expensive treatment in the future and help kids continue good oral health throughout life.

Your support is needed to get rid of toothaches, so local kids can get back to being kids.

Organization Mission: Farm Discovery empowers youth and families to regenerate healthy food, farming, nature, and community in the Pajaro Valley. We improve personal and community health and our impact on the Earth by building collaborative agricultural, ecological and social systems.

Farming and Environmental Education Internship for Local Young Adults

Many local farms cannot find skilled labor locally and must hire workers from outside the area, even while the Pajaro Valley is home to the largest family-owned organic farm in the U.S. In addition, our most food-insecure members often work in agriculture or are the children of agricultural workers.

We address both issues by offering Santa Cruz County youth an opportunity to learn to grow healthy food through a 10-month paid internship that inspires them to pursue careers in agriculture or environmental education. The students gain a unique set of skills aligned with Next Generation Science Standards.

Interns will spread their knowledge in the community by teaching thousands of local youth through our field trips and summer camp programs, passing on the skills to grow their own produce, along with cooking and preserving, tackling two major skill sets to benefit younger students and their families.

The interns finish the program with various levels of mastery of skills, such as propagation, cultivation, soil fertility, pest management, and post-production that Farm Discovery is uniquely suited to provide with access to Live Earth Farms 150 acres of organic productionan inspiring learning space.

Organization Mission: Food, What?! is a youth empowerment and food justice organization. At FoodWhat, youth cultivate their well-being, liberation and power by engaging in relationships with land, food and each other. Youth from Watsonville to Santa Cruz join the FoodWhat Crew through our spring internship, summer job training and fall project management programs. Within the supportive space of FoodWhat, youth grow, cook, eat, and distribute farm-fresh, organic food while addressing local food justice issues.

Youth-Powered Farm Stand For Community Health

In our project, FoodWhat youth gain real-life work experience by running a prescriptive farm stand in partnership with Salud para la Gente and Lakeside Organic Gardens. Salud health care providers prescribe patients with diabetes a voucher to the youth-run farm stand stationed right outside the clinic.

Some of the produce at the stand is grown and harvested by FoodWhat youth, and some is donated by our partner farm. At the farm stand, clients choose from an abundant selection that includes rainbow carrots, broccoli, chard, cucumbers, cauliflower, peppers, and tomatoes.

We cannot overstate the importance of this aspect: Local youth combine training with their lived experience to address needs in their own neighborhoods.

The new project increases FoodWhats distribution by over 2,000 pounds to those with the highest need, and is an opportunity for youth to support patients as they build strong habits around accessing healthy food, integrate this food into their familys diets, and create a community space at the intersection of youth power and community health.

Organization Mission: To inspire all girls to be strong, smart and bold, and to respect themselves and the world around them. Girls Inc. serves 1,700 girls in 41 schools with trained professionals (often older teens), who mentor them in a safe environment. Girls are inspired to pursue secondary education, develop leadership and decision-making skills, serve their communities, and acquire the ability and wisdom to lead healthy lifestyles.

Growing Together

The relationship between a girl and her mother is so powerful, it affects everything from her health and self-esteem to setting the stage for all relationships throughout her life. Communication can be a common challenge for young girls and their mothers. As girls go through puberty and related physical, mental and emotional changes, the challenges can escalate.

We hope to assist by supporting girls and their mothers or another significant adult with our new program: Growing Together. Its designed to increase positive communication between girls ages 9-12 and their mothers, or possibly a sister, aunt, grandmother, or father.

Your gift will support girls in Santa Cruz County for a weekly get-together for four weeks to share activities aimed at learning about values, body changes, health and hygiene, nutrition and exercise, goals, problem-solving strategies, conflict resolution and positive communication.

Girls Inc. teaches girls to set and achieve goals, boldly confront challenges, resist peer pressure, see college as attainable, and explore nontraditional fields.

Organization Mission: Local and vital, Grey Bears promotes nutrition, activity and social connection as a recipe for healthy aging. Our vision is that all seniors live healthy, meaningful lives. Grey Bears has evolved into one of the most efficient and resourceful food distribution, reuse and recycling nonprofits in the U.S.

Engage at Every Age

Grey Bears is a nutritional lifeline for 3,800 low-income seniors, families and veterans, delivering weekly brown bags full of fresh produce and healthy staples to Santa Cruz County aging adults. Additional daily food distributions and 40,000 hot meals served annually nourish thousands more. It all adds up to more than 2 million pounds of food distributed each year.

Hundreds of volunteers enjoy more than 20 volunteer opportunities. Their service makes our programs possible while cultivating social support systems and health benefits for both volunteers and participants. Weekly classes include tech help, Spanish, cooking, chair yoga, fix-it clinics, and luncheon events designed to keep seniors active and socially engaged, and help them age with joy, grace and dignity.

Organization Mission: Groundswell restores coastal ecosystems using nature-based solutions. We are a constructive group of ecologists, naturalists, educators, and community dedicated to designing and building habitat that makes our coast better for nature and people. We prioritize restoration that increases biodiversity, coastal resiliency, and expands community outreach. We harvest local seeds, grow native plants, then plant at degraded habitats in need of stewardship. We are small but mighty, making this work happen by pulling together an amazing group of committed volunteers, teachers and K-12 students from all over Santa Cruz County to participate in the full cycle restoration process. Groundswell has rebuilt habitat resources and restored over 11% of the Santa Cruz coastline, including well-loved beaches like Seabright, Natural Bridges and Davenport Landing.

Saving Santa Cruz Monarchs

Monarchs are on the verge of collapse, and have declined 99% on the West Coast since the 1980s. Santa Cruz is a monarch hotspot where Lighthouse Field State Beach Park is home to the second-largest overwintering population of monarch butterflies in California.

To save Santa Cruz monarchs, we want to continue to lead the community in enhancing this critical habitat. We can do this together by building nectar resources, optimizing overwintering grove conditions and curbing predation. We steward the grove ecosystem and have led students and community volunteers in this effort.

We need your help to continue this critical work, as well as to expand to other overwintering sites in Santa Cruz. Monarchs are at the heart of our community and an important part of our tourist industry.

Organization Mission: Our Mission: In the soil of our urban farm and garden, people find the tools they need to build a home in the world. Our Vision: We envision a thriving and inclusive community, workforce, and local food system. We Value: The capacity of every individual for growth and renewal, the joy that comes from growing and sharing healthy food, the well-being created by vibrant social and natural ecosystems.

Two Steps Closer to Home

The Homeless Garden Project (HGP) is building a new, permanent home, Pogonip Farm. Located within the City of Santa Cruzs Pogonip greenbelt, our new 9-acre farm will triple our capacity to transform lives and build community connections. Serving as a national model, Pogonip Farm will be the heart of HGPs dynamic agriculture program for people who are experiencing homelessness. We help to transform lives by finding homes, providing job training, teaching skills, providing volunteer opportunities, and stewarding land through organic farming.Last year, 100% of our trainee graduates obtained stable employment and stable housing, and more than 7,000 pounds of fresh, organic produce were distributed to nonprofits throughout Santa Cruz County, feeding 2,500-plus people. Strong bonds are formed by our community of volunteers, interns, customers, and trainees that break down the profound sense of isolation felt by many people experiencing homelessness.

Please consider making a gift toward one-time costs to build the Farm Center at Pogonip: an administrative and kitchen building, a barn, and greenhouses.

Organization Mission: Homeless Services Center partners with individuals and families to create pathways out of their homelessness into permanent housing.

Youth Rapid Re-Housing

The number of young adults experiencing homelessness in Santa Cruz County has grown more than 30% in the past two years. Many homeless young adults were emancipated from our foster care system, and have little or no familial support.

Imagine prepping for your first day of school or a job interview without a place to call home. With your support, we can help 100 homeless young people ages 18-24 get off the streets and into permanent housing.

All of our programs operate with a housing-first methodology: to quickly move people experiencing homelessness into permanent housing, while providing support and services to help them stay housed as they work on achieving goals. Our programs save the county millions of dollars in emergency services every year, while also saving lives.

We believe our community is innovative enough, committed enough and compassionate enough to build a future in which every young person has a home. Your gift can help us guide more youth to develop good lifetime habits.

Organization Mission: The all-volunteer Live Like Coco Foundation helps local kids grow up healthy and with opportunities to pursue their dreams. Our foundation is named for and inspired by Coco Lazenby, a self-described book lover, cat petter and environmentalist, who was killed in a car accident in 2015 at age 12. To honor Cocos bright spirit and big heart, our foundation works in four areas that made a difference in her life: literacy, nature, health and wellness, and funding for extracurricular activities.

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Santa Cruz Gives 2019: A Guide to Holiday Giving - Good Times Weekly