As usual there were lots of yummy dishes and great chatter before our meeting started. Krista spent a lot of time over dinner and drinks just chatting with TWC members and it was obvious she had lots of information to share with us all.
Janaki took notes.After dinner our first speaker was Patti Colvig who has been actively involved with Jane Donaldson and Deborah Demontreux in brainstorming sewing kit ideas. This includes a sewing/repair kit to be given to each household that we set up as well as a potential fundraising idea of selling kits, for example, for kids going away to college. They also instituted a button drive at Topanga Elementary which yielded a pretty big haul, especially from TWC member Linda Handler's kindergarten class! Ideas were discussed about how to package these kits and if any of you can think of good, practical and affordable ideas, please drop Patti a line at pcolvig@verizon.net. Gabriel thought it would be good to go with Patti when asking for donations. April Hinkle volunteered to help Patti with this project with regard to asking various organizations for donations so I look forward to an update from them at the next meeting. Patti already has a donation of $400 so she's well on her way. Linda Handler mentioned that as a teacher she gets a 15% discount at Michael's which is good to know. Thank you Patti!
Patti Colvig presenting a variety of great ideas on her sewing project
Possible inclusions in the sewing project
Several months ago, Karen and I invited Krista Stilley the director at Westwood Transitional Village, to attend one of our meetings and she accepted with great enthusiasm. We also thought we should share with her our operation controls center and office, aka the 'Bin' which Karen did before leading her up the hill to my house. During dinner, Krista had chatted with many members and when she spoke, she shared with all of us the basic structure at Westwood, intake procedures for the families and enrichment programs for the residents and their children.
She also spoke with great fondness of the Bessie Pregerson Child Development Center (preschool) and the success of that program. Krista then shared with us her career path from coming to Los Angeles to try her hand at acting to working with homeless kids and acting programs in Hollywood and then transitioning into working with the Salvation Army and finally her promotion to being the Director at Westwood Transitional Village. She shared with us that because of Federal funding, there can be no discrimination in housing and that they accept traditional married couples, two moms, two dads, single moms or unmarried couples with children.Ten of the units at Westwood Transitional Village, or fully one-quarter of the apartments, are reserved for Veterans and their families. As Catherine Grasso said, this is very important to many of our donors and is something that we should be sure to share with our member base. She also requested that we share with members when a veteran family is being moved in. Krista then briefly spoke about the fact that national transitional housing programs are in a state of flux and that the country is watching the programs that remain in place in Los Angeles.
And finally, Krista presented a beautiful plaque to Topanga Women's Circle thanking us for all we do at 'The Village.' We will bring it to the next meeting so you all can see it but the inscription says: "The Salvation Army Westwood Transitional Village Expresses Its Sincere Appreciation to The Topanga Women's Circle. Their work to provide warm homes for the Homeless Families and Children at the Village is life changing.' We are humbled and honored by their appreciation.Every speaker had a rapt audience
Teresa then talked a bit about her group, PSI Seminars, and their commitment to the Xmas gift giving initiative for the children (and their siblings) at Bessie Pregerson. What a generous things for them to do. Our gift gathering and Christmas wrapping party will be a LOT easier this year since they are handling the collection, wrapping and delivering of these 80 odd presents! Thank you Teresa...VERY much. She also shared Rita Street's donation to TWC of toys from a prior business, Prancing Ponies. This is a terrific gift to TWC and we're most appreciative. These are some thank yous that Krista shared with us. So sweet and so appreciated.
A big thank you from the little ones at Bessie Pregerson CDC at Westwood
A thank you note from a family we helped at Westwood
And finally, we will be getting the list of children at Venice Community Housing and their Christmas wish list within the next few days and TWC is committed to creating a nice holiday for these kids. In the past, TWC member Kelly Radinsky through her children's gift giving program at Mariposa School, collected the most beautiful gifts for us to share with the children at Venice. She isn't handling the program this year, so we are asking each of our volunteers to contribute a nice Christmas gift so that we will still be able to put together something nice for these very needy kids. We will be getting the list out to you of the (age, size and gender) and are asking that you will respond by choosing a child and a gift off the suggested list. In the past, as most of you will recollect, we filled a giant Xmas stocking with gifts for each of them. Let's hope that even if we can't do as much this year, it still will be something to thrill them.
A reminder of gift collecting, wrapping and giving last year!
Clicking on all photos brings them up to a bigger size.
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