Our new television program!

Hello Everyone!

Welcome to the Community Connections blog!

We had a really exciting day this week. Today we filmed our 15th field shoot at the Hiller Aviation Museum in Redwood City. We have been working at the museum all year and so we decided to use it in the next episode of our television program, Community Connections.

Every friday we go to the museum and clean the exhibits, wash the windows, help with office work and clean the inside of a model airplane. Today our participants were filmed while they were working.

"I love working at the museum with our participants," notes Adult Day Staff Chris Barcelona. "It's really great to see how productive they are."

The Volunteer Coordinator at the museum agrees, "We couldn't do it without them," he replies. "We count on them every week."

It was a lot of fun to be filmed and we are excited to see the finished product. We will film our in-studio program at the end of June.

Stay tuned for more broadcast details. And thanks for reading!

andrea

Here's to our Health!

Hello Everyone!

Welcome to the Community Connections blog!

In addition to all of our community service work, this week we are focusing on our personal health. We had a nutritionist from the Palo Alto Medical Foundation come and present a lecture on health and nutrition.

The presentation was very informative. We learned about correct portion size, healthy eating habits and fun ways to exercise. The nutritionist even brought food models to show us what types of foods are healthy.

Everyone asked good questions and learned a lot from the lecture. It was especially helpful to learn about how much sugar is in soda and other drinks. We all set goals so that we can work on getting healthier.

In addition to our educational program, we continue to add new partnerships to our list of work sites. We are now helping the Mother's Milk Bank in San Jose and Deer Hollow Farms in Los Altos in addition to our over thirty volunteer locations.

It should be an exciting summer as we gear up to work at several other new sites.

Thanks for reading!

andrea

Celebrate Art!

Hello and welcome to the Community Connections blog!

What an incredible celebration we had today! We celebrated the wonderful art work of our Adult Day participants at our 4th Annual Art Reception held at the Community School of Music and Art in Mountain View.

It was such a terrific gathering. We started with a tour of all of the art created by our participants. There were so many beautiful pieces on display. Everyone put so much work into their projects. All of the pieces were for sale and the money will go directly to the participants.

After the art tour, we had an awards celebration; everyone received a beautiful certificate and recognition. We also dedicated the reception to Priya Sadrozinski.

Everyone was so excited and happy. We finished up with a terrific buffet of cheese, crackers and cookies.

It was such a memorable event. Congratulations to everyone! You are a very talented group!

Thanks for reading.

Andrea

Gearing up for another television program

Hello Everyone!

Welcome to the Community Connections blog.

This has been a busy spring and we are getting ready to tape another episode of our television program, Abilities United Presents: Community Connections. This year our theme will be volunteering and community education. We plan to film our field shoots at Foothill Park in Los Altos and at Hiller Aviation Museum in Redwood City. We are really excited to show everyone all of the great work we are doing at these two locations. Our in-studio program will air in June and we are hoping to get Assemblyman Jim Beall on the program; one of our participants volunteers in his office.

As part of a new project, we are working with the Mother's Milk Bank in San Jose to put together their shipping materials. We get to do some of the work on center and so all of our participants get to help out.

Hopefully during the month of May we will start new partnerships with El Camino Hospital and Deer Hollow Farm. We are working really hard to put these partnerships together and are really excited about helping out.

We will also hold our 4th Annual Volunteer Recognition Luncheon in June. Everyone loves this event because it recognizes all of the excellent work our participants are doing out in the community.

Stay tuned for more exciting updates!

Thanks for reading.

andrea

A Huge Congratulations !!

Hello Everyone! Welcome to the Community Connections blog.

It has been an Incredible week for us! This past saturday, our Community Connections volunteers were honored at the Marine Science Institute during their annual Earth Day celebration. They received the Browlee Service award for outstanding community service. This is quite an impressive accomplishment!

As part of the award, the volunteers received a beautiful plaque and a very generous check! What an incredible day it was! Our participants took part in all of the Earth Day activities; including going out on a 2 hour boat ride.

Our group has been volunteering at MSI for over three years and has logged hundreds of volunteer hours.

Way to go Community Connections participants! Everyone is TERRIFIC! Thank you for all of your incredible dedication and hard work!

andrea

Expanding Volunteer Service

Welcome to the Community Connections blog!

Our Community Connections participants are once again really working hard out in the community. We are busy creating new partnerships all of the time. Right now we are getting prepared to work at El Camino Hospital in Mountain View. We will be working in the library there which should be a lot of fun.

We will also start working at Deer Hollow Farm in Los Altos. As soon as we are trained, we will be helping with all of the different animals. It's really exciting for all of our participants to learn how to care for animals.

In a new venture, we are creating a program that will bring volunteer projects to our Middlefield campus so that participants who stay on center get a chance to do volunteer work as well. We have partnered up with the Mother's Milk Bank in San Jose. Each week we drive to their office in San Jose, pick up rolls of bubble wrap, bring it back to our campus and prepare the bubble wrap for shipping. When we are finished, we take the cut-up bubble wrap back to the Mother's Milk Bank so they can use it for shipping. Everyone in our program is able to take part in this work project and it makes everyone feel great to be a part of the team. Hopefully we will have more on-center projects like this in the future.

In May we will celebrate the art work of our participants with a reception at the Community School of Music and Art. All of their work will be for sale and it will be wonderful to recognize the accomplishments or our participants.

We will also start planning for our 4th Annual Volunteer Recognition Luncheon to be held in June.

Stay tuned for more exciting news and thanks for reading!

Andrea

Make My Day!

Hello Everyone!

Thank you for reading the Community Connections blog! We have had a few very exciting weeks and we are busy at work volunteering out in the community.

Two weeks ago the Palo Alto Weekly heard about our Make My Day program and came and did a story on our work. It was so exciting to be photographed and interviewed. Our participants had picked up the flowers, arranged them on center and then delivered them with a card and cookies to Dan Logan in Palo Alto. It was such a celebration and Dan was so very happy.

Our participants really love this work.

We also started our first volunteer project at our own building. All of the participants are involved in this new project. We are putting together shipping materials for a non profit agency in San Jose. We size up the bubble wrap and make it ready for shipping. In one day alone we filled eight garbage bags full of usable bubble wrap. We were so productive and everyone felt great about getting so much work done!

We will also start another new partnership next month....so stay tuned!

Thanks for reading.

andrea