Connecting the Dots - Grassroots Grantmaking Based on Trust

March 2019

Progress Newsletter

by James Higa, Executive Director

Steve Jobs famously said that you can only connect the dots looking backwards. S ometimes, the seeds that you plant and the connections that you make only flower over a long arc of time and dogged dedication to the task.

Many of you may have heard the recent PBS story about Ear Hustle, the podcast produced entirely in San Quentin prison. Let's see how the dots of PVF's work has connected one on top of another over these many years.


	Bill Somerville, PVF Founder (Left) and Larry Purcell, Catholic Worker House Founder (Right)

PVF has worked for over 25 years with Larry Purcell, who founded the Catholic Worker House in Redwood City . Our work with The Catholic Worker House has always followed Bill Somerville's grantmaking ethos of responsiveness and trust. Like dots across a map, o ne can now look across the Peninsula and over to West Oakland to see the fruits of this partnership in grassroots support around food insecurity , housing , employ ment and education.

The first stop is St. Anthony's Padua Dining Room in Menlo Park now serving 500 meals a day which PVF and the Catholic Worker House supported with a truck to pick up food from the produce markets, and a generator to become an emergency shelter.

Next to the Saint Francis Center in Fair Oaks where funding helped set up the very first house to distribute food and clothing, and now there is also a school, a gym, a community garden and 135 units of low-income housing.

Then to the Multicultural Institute's house for day laborers in Redwood City , which was provided by funding from the Catholic Worker House.

And next to the four Catholic Worker Hospitality Houses in San Bruno which serve the chronically homeless.


Kate Chatfield, Policy Director of Re:store Justice (Left) and Adnan Khan, co-founder of Re:Store Justice (Right) Photo credit: SF Chronicle

And finally to the Re:Store House in West Oakland, co- run by the San Bruno Catholic Worker's Kate Chatfield , which we featured in December . Through a large gift by a PVF donor, the Catholic Worker House was able to help purchase the Re:Store house to serve re-entry clients.

Kate Chatfield, who is now the Policy Director of Re:Store Justice, helped to write California Senate Bill 1437 , a re-sentencing bill that became effective in January 2019 , earning Re:Store House client Earlonne Woods (co-founder of Ear Hustle) a feature on t he PBS Newshour. As Kate says: "Here's the Re:Store house in all its glory. Oh, and in the video Earlonne is driving the Scion, the used car donation that PVF arranged."

What's next for popular podcast 'Ear Hustle,' now that co-host has left prison

"This is one of the greatest accomplishments in the history of our work together. All the time we are feeding, clothing, sheltering and educating the poor. This work of Re:Store Justice

is more complete because not only do we work with individuals who are on the margins (inmates and ex-inmates), but we are simultaneously changing the system that is part of the problem by changing the laws. For me this is exactly what makes sense as a Catholic Worker. For me this is what it is to be a good human being. I am so excited about this work. Thanks for making it possible -- all of you."

- Larry Purcell, Founder of the Catholic Worker House

"But it 's all one," we are reminded by Kate Chatfield, whose long years as a Catholic Worker compelled her to study law so that she might work to reform sentencing laws that disproportionately impact youth of color and women : " Philanthropic Ventures Foundation paid for my law school tuition ! "

Humanity and Compassion at the McAllen, TX Border

Our Program Associate Aly Quiroz-Perez recently participated in a humanitarian mission in McAllen, Texas, organized by Lilli Rey, the founder of Bay Area Border Relief. Lilli came to Philanthropic Ventures Foundation's attention by way of Sheryl Young, our San Mateo County Program Director, who participated in the first humanitarian mission to McAllen when the immigration crisis began. In November 2018, Aly joined a team of 20+ Bay Area volunteers, made up of mothers, nurses, University of San Francisco students and professors, and filmmakers, taking action to address the crisis that the Trump Administration created in separating children from their parents to discourage others from entering the U.S.

"Each of us in our own way was trying to serve the countless who came to the center with so many traumatic accounts of their harrowing journeys. I spent most of my time at the center providing clothing to each child who came in, trying to connect with them and witnessing their childhood innocence and spirit slowly rekindled after being extinguished by their experiences at the Detention Center."

- Harini Krishnan, Bay Area Border Relief volunteer

They heard stories of people making the difficult journey from Central America to the U.S. to escape poverty and violence, both domestic and gang-related. They saw exhausted and worried parents, young men hoping to get jobs to support the families they left behind, and children. Some were so exhausted that they just fell asleep wherever they could. One little boy took a nap on the floor, using a bag of clothing as a pillow to lay down his head. The rest of his body was on the cold, dirty, and hard floor.

It may be a while until this immigration crisis is completely resolved, but with the help of wonderful people like the Bay Area Border Relief volunteers we can at least mitigate the negative effects of the current administration's policies.