It has been a long and hard year for Puente’s Education team as they redesigned a more robust and long-term youth program. In the fall of 2018, Puente was accepted into the PropelNext third cohort initiative to dream big about the types of outcomes wanted for the youth in San Mateo’s rural South Coast. And […]

  Rita Mancera remembers the phone call she got in November 2018. On the other end of the line was Darnell Cadette, a manager with the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative (CZI). He introduced himself, told her about CZI, and then said something unexpected: his organization recently learned about Puente and was interested in supporting their work–immediately. […]

  In the decades before they became ‘Promotoras de Salud’ (community health workers) with Puente, Yolanda Morales and Yesenia Ramirez worked in many Pescadero fields and flower nurseries. Some of their working conditions were illegal, although they didn’t know it at the time. Morales remembers being exposed to toxic pesticides, which made her and her […]

If you ask Ruth Shavel why she has spent her entire life volunteering for Peninsula nonprofits, including Puente, she will give a simple answer. “I could do it,” she says. “So I did.” Shavel, 87, is as modest as she is generous. For the past eight years, she has been a committed volunteer and the […]