July Overview

Greetings FIRST 5 LTI Partners & Families, it's July!

Deep into the heart of summer break, hope you are enjoying the bright sun, blue skies, and fun times with your friends and families. Many of us are still hard at work, serving the families, and having extra children who are out of school. Here's our monthly recap and upcoming events for July in Mountain View, Sunnyvale, Cupertino, and West San Jose.


We hope you enjoy this new format for our monthly news, thanks to the tech-savvy inventiveness of Volunteer Coordinator/Community Coordinator Nancy Doan. Let us know how you like it.

In this issue:

• Changes in Staffing and the CHAC-JFCS/Parents Place Partnership
• June 28 Fundraiser - Trauma-Proofing Your Kids
• Public Health Department Focus Group collaboration with CAT
• Now on the side bar:
• Classes (listed under each location)
• Outreach
• Volunteer Corner
• Calendars

Staffing and Partnership Changes

Thursday, June 28, the last day of our fiscal year, also marked the last day for our Volunteer Manager, Deborah Sloss from the team. Deborah passed the very rigorous licensing exams for Licensed Clinical Social Worker (LCSW) recently, and has decided to pursue entering into clinical work. We wish her all the best! We appreciate the skills and experience that JFCS/Parents Place and Deborah brought to our partnership, and we look forward to our paths crossing again in the future.

Because of this change, JFCS Parents Place has decided not to continue in our LTI partnership this year. Community Coordinators Nancy Doan and Hadas Keppel will now be employed by CHAC and continue the great work they have been doing for our communities. 

Pictured: L-R (Back) Volunteer Dylan Nguyen, Volunteer Yuko Fujimoto, Community Coordinator Hadas Keppel, FRC Manager Brandy Vanderheiden, Community Coordinator Ana Moreno, Volunteer Angie James, Volunteer Leyla Jurado Romani, L-R (Front) Childcare Coordinator/Volunteer Guadalupe Romo, Community Coordinator Yadira Rios, Volunteer Coordinator/Community Coordinator Nancy Doan, Program Director Maddi Pascua, former Volunteer Coordinator Deborah Sloss, Milani James, Chris Padilla (volunteers in training). 

New Volunteer Coordinators

Congratulations to Nancy Doan, who will be taking on the role of Volunteer Coordinator part time, in addition to her duties in Cupertino and West San Jose. We will be hiring another part time Community Worker to help out in the field to ensure plenty of support for the region. We are confident that Nancy will be able to support our current volunteers and recruit even more wonderful people to help extend our services in our third year.

FRC Administrator, Ana Valle, will be assisting our Spanish speaking volunteers. We look forward to building and supporting our Spanish speaking volunteer network.

Trauma-Proofing Your Kids Fundraiser

Thank you to all of our partners who attended our fundraiser and helped us spread the word. Brandy Vanderheiden (facilitator) said, "I was so excited to have the opportunity to present this material and teach parents how to attend to children in affirming ways that help prevent the adverse symptoms of trauma and accumulated stress from building up." Maddi Pascua, Program Director, said "This was also a really wonderful training for our staff and volunteers."

We also had a sale of small paintings. Several years ago, former staff member and Art Therapist, Jane Haddow, quietly approached CHAC interns, friends, and professional artists to paint a mini canvas as a fundraiser for our program.   She saw it both as a way to share something with the community and for budding artists to have a wonderful outlet and expression. We had our initial showing at our Trauma Proofing event, but will host another showing in the future. If you would like to see and purchase a canvas, please contact our center.

We are grateful for the community support of our program, and hope to provide more events like this in the near future!

Beautiful art pieces painted by our CHAC artists

Brandy presenting to an attentive & engaging audience

Public Health Department Focus Group Collaboration with CAT: 

Community Worker Ana Moreno in collaboration with Marilu Delgado of the Community in Action Team (CAT) collaborated to bring members of the CAT community and participants from our LTI Program to assist the public health department in gaining understanding in the community about Public Health issues. We were happy to collaborate with CAT and help make a bridge between neighbors who attend our two groups. We look forward to continuing our partnership in the coming year.

Thanks for your partnership, participation, and community involvement. 

Until next month,

Brandy, Nancy, and the whole staff