04 Jun 2012

Record number of graduates receive Youth Bridges Scholarships


Pescadero’s High School graduation is the biggest community event of the year. It feels like a rock concert at the gym. But sitting in the bleachers back in 2009, something started to bother Carol Young-Holt. It was the fact that, as certain students were singled out and applauded for academic achievements, three-quarters of the graduating class sat there without hearing their names.

Young-Holt, a founding supporter of Puente, knew how many of those students had worked at Puente over the years, struggling to support their families with part-time jobs and also finish high school.

“Not all the kids at Pescadero High School are at the top of their class. There are kids for whom simply graduating is a huge achievement,” she says.

Many of those youth had been working since puberty and still managed to be the first in their families – often, recent immigrants – to obtain a diploma.

Young-Holt, a longtime Puente board member, founded the Puente Youth Bridges Scholarships to honor students who had done double duty, earning a salary at Puente while earning that degree. Eleven students in this year’s graduating class earned Puente scholarships, cumulatively worth $3,350. It’s the biggest crop of scholarships ever awarded since the scholarship was established in 2009 – a point of pride for Young-Holt, who raises the money from local residents who care about seeing kids succeed. Puente’s Board of Directors contributes to the scholarship fund each year, as do more than 40 community families, thanks to the efforts of the Development Committee.

Puente is the largest youth employer on the South Coast. Half the students at Pescadero High School work for Puente at some point. Puente currently has 20 part-time youth employees, according to Program Director Rita Mancera. That number balloons to 40 youth in summertime.

Students use Bridges Scholarship monies to pay for books and school fees in their first year of college. The longer they’ve worked for Puente, the more they earn in scholarship dollars – between $50 and $450.

Scholarship recipient Laura Rodriguez will be one of roughly 20 students graduating from Pescadero High on June 8. The 17-year-old has lived in Pescadero most of her life and has worked pretty much every job at Puente over the last four years, from coordinator of the Homework Club to teaching Spanish. She needed the work to help out her family and will use the money to pay for school supplies and tuition in her first semester at Sierra College, near Sacramento.

Looking back, she’s amazed that she did it all.

“I go to school in the morning, come home, go to work.  Then I go back home, do my homework, help my siblings with their homework, feed them, get them ready for bed… and the next day it’s the same routine.”

Rodriguez has been working since she was 14. Her parents also work long hours. Going to college will be the first time she’s left Pescadero. She wants to study family counseling and business and finance, areas that piqued her interest after working at Puente.

“I kind of wanted to go out into the real world and experience different cultures and meet new people,” says Rodriguez. “I want to knew who I really am and what I really want in my life before I make major decisions.”

Mariela Lopez always knew she was going to college – even though her parents didn’t have the funds to send her there. Lopez, 19, just finished a challenging first year at Cal State Monterey Bay, where she studies social and behavioral sciences. She wants to be a criminal investigator.

Lopez has been working for Puente since her freshman year of high school, and she’s back in Pescadero to work in the Summer Youth Program. She didn’t have to work at all this year thanks to scholarships from Puente, the Silicon Valley Community Foundation and others. She’s not sure about next year, though.

“I’ve never had loans and it kind of freaks me out,” confesses Lopez. “I came back here to Pescadero because I want to work and save my money, so I don’t have to get loans – I really don’t want to.”

 

To contribute to the Youth Bridges Scholarship Program, contact Kerry Lobel at (650) 879-1691 x144 or klobel@mypuente.org.

01 Jun 2012

Access to land and housing top concerns for South Coast food producers

Driving down the San Mateo County coast in springtime, motorists are likely to admire the verdant row crops and fields of grazing cattle that dot the roadside vistas near Pescadero. Few people know the South Coast’s sad little secret: finding land to farm and live on is so expensive that the lifestyle itself is in peril.

That’s what South Coast farmers and ranchers told Puente in response to a recent South Coast Agriculture Survey. Puente sought to identify ways it could help sustain food production and support a farm-based economy, the most important industry on the coast.

More than 50% of farmers in the area are first-time food producers, according to the survey. They quickly discover the struggle to hold on to valuable farmland. Property values reflect the greater Silicon Valley market, pushing land values into the range of $3 million for just a few acres of ranchland real estate. Buying is out of the question, so some operations lease their land from private owners or open space preservation groups like Midpeninsula Regional Open Space District or Peninsula Open Space Trust (POST).

But finding an affordable, long-term lease is one of the biggest challenges on the coast. Of 43 survey respondents (out of 120 surveyed), 75 percent said leases are not long-term enough, which acts as a disincentive to stay and invest in the land.

“How can we pass along our ranching opportunity to our kids? We need longevity. After all the work we’ve put in, we’d like to pass the lease on to our kids,” says Doniga Markegard, who owns Markegard Family Grass-Fed with her husband, Erik. Markegard conducted the agriculture survey for Puente and says many farming and ranching families have the same concerns.

The family raises grass-fed beef, lamb, pastured pork and free-range chicken eggs on a 3,000-acre rolling coastal range above San Gregorio. They rent the land, and the house, from POST. But the lease is short-term. Other farmers fear the land they lease may be sold.

This is where Puente has identified one of the biggest opportunities to help build relationships. Overwhelmingly, the agricultural community responded to the survey by asking Puente to help keep farming alive on the South Coast – a process Puente kicked off at its weekly Pescadero Grown! farmer’s markets. Now local food producers are looking to Puente to help with other challenges, such as the fact that rental housing is so expensive that it makes it impossible for farmers to live on their own land.

“The connection that Puente makes between food, farmers and farm workers is essential to the survival of the economy on the South Coast,” says Puente Executive Director Kerry Lobel. “The Farmer’s Market is the biggest step so far, but only the first one.”

Puente put local farmers on the map last year – literally – by creating the area’s first Foodshed Map, thanks to Doniga Markegard. Puente connects farmers with farm workers looking for jobs. It helps bridge the language gap between managers and workers with its Spanish classes for English speakers, a program popular with the agriculture community. And bilingual Puente youth are on hand at farmer’s markets to help Spanish-speaking customers speak to vendors.

Going forward, Puente sees a new role for itself to help form mutually beneficial relationships between landowners and the agricultural community. Puente is thinking about hosting a land-linking mixer and will encourage open space agencies like POST to extend long-term leases to tenants.

San Mateo County Supervisor Don Horsley’s office, which includes the South Coast, is hard at work trying to make it easier for farmers and ranchers to build farm labor housing on their own land by addressing sticky permit issues and problems like the need for new septic tanks.

Horsley also wants to repair deterioriating farm worker housing, which often dates back to the 1960s or earlier. He has asked the Housing Department to set aside money for a low-interest loan program to give owners an incentive to update their housing stock.

Pescadero’s fertile fields won’t be enough to retain food producers if people are worried about housing and land succession, says Horsley.

“How do we get a new generation to take over and make sure the land stays in row crops and agriculture?” he asks.

 

To learn more about Pescadero Grown! and Puente’s connection with local farmers, visit www.pescaderogrown.org.

 

01 Jun 2012

Why we give to Puente: Two faith groups speak out

Why we give to Puente: Two faith groups speak out

So many of the needs of participants in Puente programs are deeply practical: Blankets. Sweaters. School supplies. Toiletries. Two Puente donor groups, Knitzvah and the Metropolitan Community Church of San Mateo, understand this better than anyone and have brought their communities into the act of giving to Puente – sometimes in surprising ways.

Making blankets for Knitzvah at Shir Hadash Mitzvah Day (photo by Mindy Berkowitz)

Knitzvah gives Puente quilts, sweaters, hats and other items that members knit or crochet themselves. Loosely affiliated with Jewish Family Services of Silicon Valley, Knitzvah’s volunteers are constantly in “gift mode,” churning out baby booties, winter scarves, and even little knitted dolls for children whose parents can’t afford such a small luxury.

Since their first delivery of hand-crafted gifts to Puente in 2010, Knitzvah members have given 1,076 items to Puente clients, according to Barbara Berlant, founder of Knitzvah.

“People want to do good deeds, and they are thrilled to be able to make something to benefit someone else – especially Puente,” says Berlant. “They have huge hearts. And you could not buy the joy that if gives them to do this.”

Knitzvah crafts gifts for more than 15 hospitals, shelters and nonprofits around the Bay Area. Thanks to a meeting with Puente Executive Director Kerry Lobel, members were deeply moved by Puente’s story.

“It’s not a job for Kerry, it’s a passion. Our group felt that passion. It is our pleasure to help them,” adds Berlant.

See Puente’s wish list here.

Peninsula Metropolitan Community Church at Backpack Altar (photo by Rev. Terri Echelbarger)

The close-knit congregation of San Mateo’s Metropolitan Community Church has made Puente a priority since 2005; back when Puente’s unofficial motto was “Bicycles, Blankets and Beans.” The Rev. Terri Echelbarger, a longtime Puente volunteer, asks her congregation to gather school supplies for South Coast children. Every year, local students count on their generosity.

“In this part of the Bay Area, Pescadero is the area of greatest need. You can’t load up and walk to a Wal-Mart or anything like that,” says Echelbarger.

The church congregation, which numbers around 50, also prepares a Christmas stocking for both kids and adult farm workers living near Pescadero. The men get toiletries and clean socks. The kids get school supplies and small toys.

Another year, Echelbarger distributed empty Chinese take-out food containers and asked people to fill them up with loose change. They raised nearly $500 for Puente.

Echelbarger knows Puente well – she recently took a personal sabbatical to volunteer with Puente and help where she was needed.

“Puente is a very professionally-run, effective service on the South Coast. It’s a wonderful investment of our resources. We know that every penny is used in a responsible way that makes a real difference,” she says.

 

To donate to Puente, visit http://mypuente.org/. To learn about volunteer opportunities at Puente, call (650) 879-1691 ext 102 or rmancera@mypuente.org.