This WOD looks so FUN!!! I hope there is some good programming next week, because there may be a visitor

For consideration, I’d like to nominate TAPS – Tragedy Asistance Program for Survivors – http://www.taps.org. It’s an organization that helps the surviving family members of fallen servicemen and women, working with them in grief training.

Every Memorial Day weekend, we have the National Good Grief Seminar (for the adults) and the Good Grief Camp (for the kids of all ages). I volunteer as a mentor every year since I first heard about the organization. All mentors either served in the military or are currently serving. This is part of the symbolism that the military family still is there for the families. My 3 girls all know they can reach out to me as a big sister, friend, confidant.

In addition to the National Seminar/Camp, they have regional weekend retreats as well that reach out within a local community.

TAPS receives no government support and relies solely on the generosity of donors. Donations help cover the cost to the families, so that they can attend. All volunteers pay on our own in addition to volunteering our time.

A friend and mentor of mine from high school was a marine who died in 2004 while in the line of duty in Fallujah Iraq. To this day, he is still a huge inspiration to me and everyone else in the community that he served. Here is a little blurb from the Foundation website (www.jpblecksmith.org)

The JP Blecksmith Leadership Foundation was started in his honor. A large part of the proceeds go to support the Flintridge Prep’s J.P. Blecksmith ’99 Memorial Scholarship Fund which is given to a rising senior at Flintridge Prep. The Fund was established in 2004 to honor the memory of 2nd Lieutenant James Patrick Blecksmith ’99, who died while serving in Iraq. The JP Blecksmith ’99 Memorial Scholarship Fund offsets tuition for deserving students, funds special leadership opportunities for selected students of promise, and through the JP Blecksmith ’99 Annual Award honors a rising senior who personifies the qualities of leadership, scholarship, athletic commitment, and public service that J.P. embodied.

His story was also featured in Details magazine if you’d like to read more:

http://www.jpblecksmith.org/Fallen_Soldier.pdf

I’d like to nomiate the Downtown Women’s Center, which is an orgination dedicated to ending homelessness for all women. I interned with them for a year when I was completing my Master’s Degree, and they are doing wonderful things. You can check out their website here:
http://dwcweb.org/

In addition to providing permanant, supportive housing for women struggling with homelessness AND mental illness, they provide 3 meals a day to over 200 women every single day in their Drop-In Day Center. They offer counseling, case management, computer classes, job resources, showers, laundry, and day beds for homeless women every day. They also offer a multitue of groups and classes, such as Anger Management, Domestic Violence & Healthy Relationship classes, Self-Esteem (which is one of the groups I led!), and support groups from women struggling with Depression.

I cannot even tell you all of the good things that they are doing, including opening up a clinic complete with a mammogram machine. A full service clinic specifically for homeless women in Los Angeles will be the first of its kind. This organization is so uniue because if you’ve ever walked around Skid Row, you would see plenty of services for men, and very few for women. The Downtown Women’s Center is the only organization of its kind that is providing comprehensive serivces to women struggling with homelessness. I still volunteer there and its a wonderful place to be.

PLEASE take a look at their website. I’d love to nomimate them for this because they are currently in the process of expanding their housing facilities and every dollar counts. Ask me if you have any questions! I love talking about this great organization.

As a CFI member since 2010, Viviana Franco started a non-profit organization right here in Hawthorne, CA.

I would like to humbly like to nominate her organization, From Lot to Spot, a non profit 501c3 organization dedicated to working in low-income, communities of color.

From Lot to Spot’s (FLTS) mission is to stimulate and contribute to community development in underserved communities by facilitating the creation of accessible green and open spaces. From Lot to Spot, through its vision of empowering neighborhoods one space lot at a time, works to empower residents by ensuring their participation and collaboration in every step of the decision-making process involved in creating these spaces and improving their neighborhoods.

FLTS Core Programs
Cleaning the Century
The Cleaning the Century program is aimed at creating livable communities for the disadvantaged communities surrounding the 105 “Century “Freeway in Los Angeles County. The Century Freeway stretches 17 miles from the cities of El Segundo to Norwalk. A number of communities were divided and neighborhoods transformed because of the Century Freeway. Land-use patterns changed and communities have suffered the environmental impacts such as pollution and detritus that freeways bring. FLTS works with communities to hear and assess their needs and help revitalize their neighborhoods. In the Cleaning the Century program, FLTS uses a comprehensive Spanish-English bilingual approach to reach the community. This does not come in the form of a simple ‘translation’ but rather a deeper, historic understanding of a community’s needs.

FLTS is proud to build relationships with the community through a grassroots approach; both community based organizations and community members themselves. Currently FLTS is working on greenspace and environmental justice campaigns in the community of Lennox and cities of Lynwood, Lawndale, Hawthorne and Inglewood.

Spaces of Blight Program
The Spaces of Blight (SOB) program is a high school level course created by From Lot to Spot that teaches high school students not only to preserve their environment, but to take an active role in their community’s development by beautifying their neighborhoods. In order to create change in the underserved neighborhoods they live in, students identify spaces of blight or “SOB’s” in their communities and throughout the course of the semester, convert SOB’s into spaces of light or “SOL’s”. Students have first-hand experience in studying multi-benefit solutions and creating innovative solutions that beautify and improve their communities. The main goal of the Spaces of Blight program is to create awareness about blighted spaces in neighborhoods that are in need of revitalization and teach students to create hands on, real-world, multi-benefit solutions to these problems. The Spaces of Blight program allows students to engage in policy-making, critical thinking, strategic community planning and environmental justice issues. Students utilize and receive hands-on training on tools such as GIS mapping, governmental processing, urban design, streetscape maintenance and landscape architecture. The following is a sample of FLTS current and past projects reflecting our community engagement work.

The Alzheimer’s association would be our charity of choice, in honor of Patrick’s dad.

PS, I really miss you guys… Been trying to keep with the WODs…