Invest in Woodside this
Holiday Season!
Invest in Woodside this
Holiday Season!
What better way to close out this year or to remember a friend, neighbor or family member during this season of giving than with an investment in our Town?
With an eye towards the future, this year the Foundation’s intrepid Board of Directors decided it was time to invest in modernizing the organization. After serving the Town as an all-volunteer non-profit for more than 60 years, we figured it was time. Now, as the year draws to a close, we are taking stock and feeling a real sense of accomplishment. We’ve launched a brand new website which allows you to make safe and secure online donations, streamlined our process for adding new Funds, stepped up our Board involvement, and are working hard to make our accounting processes less burdensome.
Perhaps the best outcome of this investment has been the opportunity to really get to know our amazing Fund Liaisons better. The projects they support are truly extraordinary, and we are proud to say that each and every one makes Woodside a better place.
So as this year draws to a close, we hope you will explore this site to finish your year end giving. We’re also hoping you will cross a few names off your holiday shopping list by making honorary gifts to one, some or all of our community Funds. When we receive your honorary gift, we will send an acknowledgement card to your honoree so that you both can know that you are helping Woodside.
Happy holidays!
Quentin Cooper
President
Celebrate!
On a beautiful late summer evening in August, the Foundation’s Board of Directors hosted a celebration of the launch of their brand new website, WoodsideGiving.org, at Rick and Kerry DeBenedetti’s historic Lake House. Joined by donors and friends, the Board took the opportunity to get program updates from each of the Foundation’s Fund Liaisons and to hear from Foundation President, Quentin Cooper.
WCF 2.0
Over the last year, the WCF Board of Directors has taken on the challenge of giving the organization a timely tuning up. As WCF Treasurer Rob Flint says, “We’ve opted to use some of the money in our General Fund to make a special investment in the future of the Foundation. By modernizing our systems to make things run more smoothly we benefit our donors, our Fund Liaisons and the broader community.”
To date, the Foundation has invested General Funds in the development and maintenance of a new website, overhaul of accounting and bookkeeping procedures, expanded communications, and increasing Board involvement. Stay tuned for future developments!
WHOA Rounds Up Day of the Horse 2015
If you think back to the early days of Woodside, horses have always figured prominently in the Town’s history. Indeed, it was the horse-drawn carriage that moved the wealth of San Francisco around on the Peninsula, and conveyed some of San Francisco’s wealthiest and most influential families to their homes here.
Today, horses are still very much a part of the town of Woodside and the Woodside-area Horse Owners Association (WHOA) is dedicated to honoring and preserving the fundamental role of horses in maintaining the Town’s rural character while celebrating how that role has expanded in the last century.
Day of the Horse 2015, WHOA’s unique annual celebration of the horse, took place on a sunny Saturday in October.
“Seeing the Wells Fargo Stagecoach being pulled by four gorgeous horses and filled to the brim with families really made the cultural and historical significance of the horse in Woodside come alive,” says Diane Talbert, Woodside Community Foundation Board member. “The groups of horse vaulters, polo teams, Junior Riders and 4-H members showed that horses continue to contribute much to the modern day culture of our Town. Along with the use of the horse in today’s fast-paced and stress-filled environment as a therapeutic remedy for kids with self-confidence issues and for veterans suffering from the effects of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, it was inspiring to learn how horses are still having a positive effect on the Woodside Community more than a hundred years after the first pioneers settled here,” Diane added.
WHOA is supported by the Woodside Community Foundation. You are invited to contribute to Day of the Horse 2016 and WHOA’s other extraordinary projects.
Angel Food Delivers with Heart
For the past 3 years, The Angel Food Pantry has bought, procured, packed and delivered over 4000 bags of healthy groceries to people in need. And, while there is no doubt that we have helped many families, often keeping hunger at bay, it’s time to change direction, and put everything we’ve learned towards an even greater good. To use all those fruits and veggies in a different way—one that creates more of a circle, rather than a vertical line that goes from the top to the bottom.
I want to create an opportunity for the receivers to become the givers. Because that’s what really feeds the soul. We will still respond to those who are in need of food, but here are our added Fall projects:
Replacing the junk food sold in the ice cream carts/trucks that operate outside of local schools with healthier snacks. Partnering with the vendors, many of whom are moms, we are aiming to promote better choices, boost sales and health, while lowering all that after school sugar intake. Stay tuned. Thanks to Francisca for trusting this trial run.
Blending up “Drink Your Breakfast” Wednesdays at Fair Oaks Elementary School. By exposing kids to fresh fruits and veggies in a fun way, they learn to seek them out and make better choices. (The first one on Oct. 7th went berry smoothie:)
Bringing a Birthday Party in a Box to clients living in local shelters. We will happily deliver a personalized cake, plates, hats, balloons, and lots of heart to those experiencing transition and change.
Serving injured servicemen and women at the Veterans Administration Hospital with special pizza lunches.
My ultimate goal is to give an opportunity to the great women that I have been helping with groceries, to help me, to serve the community. Because I believe that when everyone has enough, we all thrive. So, Angel Food will continue to evolve in ways that are unique and organically helpful.
If you have leads on fruit sources, blenders, funding for the snack cart change, smoothie days, or birthday boxes, or just have questions, please contact me. I also really need gift cards to grocery stores. Every penny spent with care.
Because it takes teamwork to make the dream work!
Thank you/Gracias!
Jenn Holden
The Theatre’s Best Show Ever
The Woodside Community Theatre’s Fall production of CHICAGO did the Town proud this year. Drawing heavily on local talent (including students from Woodside High School) scores of volunteers contributed countless hours to making this one of the Theatre’s best shows ever.
As co-producer Donna Losey puts it, “We only do one show a year so we put everything we’ve got into it. The sets are high quality. The costumes are spectacular. You just have to come to the show to believe the quality of our productions.”
Less than half the cost of this year’s production was covered by ticket sales so, as always, the Theatre depends on support from its generous donors to help cover remaining costs and to keep ticket prices as low as possible. Indeed, Woodside Community Theatre tickets remain one of the lowest on the Peninsula.
For more information or to get involved, visit the Woodside Community Theatre’s Facebook page or WoodsideTheatre.com.
New Museum Exhibit Coming Soon
This year, Woodside Community Museum Committee members are looking for additional donations to help defray the cost of a brand new exhibit.
In coming months they will install a time line of the history of the Town. As Committee member Thalia Lubin puts it, “The story of Woodside is fascinating and unique on the Peninsula. We think this new exhibit will offer a good way for people to learn more about the history of our Town. By understanding the history, residents can share in the sense of pride in our Town.”
Town residents are welcome to use the Museum’s archives, which include numerous photographs and documents, and can research family lineages using the Museum’s recently installed copy of Ancestry.com. For a special appointment with a Committee member or with the Archivist, please call 650-851-1294 or send an email.
Woodside’s First Ecological Restoration
Using donations sent in memory of beloved Woodside resident Nancy Gonzalez, the Woodside Landscape Committee is starting the first ecological restoration project in Town, the replanting of the local native grasses and wildflowers on Village Hill.
Landscape Contractor Frank Manocchio and his crew prepared the test site for this pilot project by creating five long rows, each bordered by a 3”-high protective border of weed-grass thatch that they raked from other areas of the hillside (photo).
Then on Halloween Day, Committee members sowed a variety of native wildflower and grass seeds local to the Town of Woodside with a mixture of potting soil and fertilizers. Wildflower varieties include native Poppies, Clarkia, Tidy Tips, Lotus, Plantain, and miniature bi-color Lupine, as well as the lovely Purple Needle Grass and California Oat Grass.
This project’s plan has been developed by Craig Dremann, a local Ecological Restoration professional who specializes in grasslands and wildflower meadows. Craig has worked with the US Forest Service in nine Western States, as well as local private land owners, and has been doing grassland restoration work for 42 years.
Committee members lovingly sowed the local native seeds, and if all goes as planned, this will produce a splendid show in April and will keep the Hill green without supplemental irrigation, demonstrating that ecological restoration projects of this type can be planted elsewhere around Town. The other potential for the project to show is that with proper weed management, there may be dormant native seeds still in the soil underneath the weeds on other Woodside hillsides, just waiting to sprout, once the weeds like the wild oats are managed.
As Landscape Committee member Peggie MacLeod says, “We’re excited because we can still read stories about what the hillsides in our area used to look like long before development. In the spring, the hills were covered with a riot of wildflowers. A glimpse of what that spectacle might have looked like appears every spring in Edgewood Park. With our restoration project we’re hoping to restore that native beauty to Village Hill.”
Peggie went on to emphasize that the Woodside Landscape Committee would not be able to take on this pilot project without the generous contributions made in memory of Nancy Gonzalez and finished by saying, “With more donations, we will be able to continue native plant restoration projects on more of the Village Hill and restore other areas around Town.”
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