The V.A. complex in West Los Angeles boasts an unexpected feature: the Serenity Park Parrot Sanctuary, which offers nursing care and refuge to exotic birds left without owners.
Veteran Matthew Simmons started the sanctuary, which is funded by donations, after serving in the Navy during Operation Desert Storm. The facility rehabilitates sick or injured birds, and in the process helps troubled vets, too. “If you’re not offered a ledge up, it’s a very deep pit, and there’s lots of guys down there,” Simmons tells NBC 2.
One person benefitting from these beautiful creatures is Coast Guard veteran Lily Love. She suffered from PTSD after her service, prompting to five trips to the V.A. psychiatric ward, but ever since she started spending time at Serenity Park, she’s stayed out of the hospital. Love is now in charge of the kitchen, preparing meals for parrots each day starting at 6 a.m. She says that working with the birds, “takes me out of myself.”
Navy veteran Bob Corell describes the time he spends Serenity Park as his “salvation.” “I think I’m a little kinder. A little gentler than I was before I got here,” he says.
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Tag: California
Things Are Heating Up in This Los Angeles Kitchen
You’re heard the warning about having too many cooks in the kitchen. But for Mott Smith, it’s a warning that might be better unheeded.
As the developer of the new L.A. Prep, Smith has designed a space for co-worker cooks. Opening next month, this 56,000-square-foot former warehouse has been transformed into 50 fully licensed, professional kitchens — complete with a chef in each one, according to Next City.
The L.A. County Department of Public Health mandates that all food producers (except those on the smallest scale) utilize restaurant-style kitchens to meet strict health codes. Businesses run into problems, however, when they want to expand. Normally, they have two options: (1) expanding to a larger kitchen that can cost thousands of dollars or (2) become a “gray market” operator and use restaurant space at night.
That is, until L.A. Prep popped onto the scene. The place will give cooks access to upscale kitchens without the crazy overhead normally associated with it. Chefs can bring in their ingredients on day one and walk out with goods ready for sale.
Leah Ferrazzani is one of the first tenants scheduled to move into the space. Her company Semolina Artisanal Pasta previously ran out of her home’s kitchen. Limited by space and time, Ferrazzani is optimistic about her move to L.A. Prep, as she estimates that it will double her production from 45 to 90 pounds per day.
L.A. Prep will be the first of its kind, occupying the middle ground between cottage production (at-home production that is sold directly to consumers) and large-scale industrial food markets. While it took some finagling with the Health Department, Smith was able to get approval.
Right now the health department is starting to see that there are a lot of ways that they can still keep people safe but also be more open-minded about the way they regulate things,” Ferrazzani tells Next City.
For Smith, L.A. Prep represents the opportunity to expand innovation.
“I’m passionate about experimentation and innovation in cities,” Smith says. “Everything I’ve done is about opening up the marketplace at the entry level…making it easier for small businesses to do their thing, innovate and realize that awesomeness that is implicit in L.A.”
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Despite Pests and a Lack of Experienced Help, This Woman Found Success Raising Organic Produce
When it comes to food, Sasha Kanno is involved in pretty much every aspect of it. A resident of southern California, she’s been working for many years to bring the organic food movement to the region. Between her numerous gardens and her new nonprofit Long Beach Local, Kanno is a pioneer in the field of sustainable agriculture.
With no prior experience in farming, Kanno’s interest was originally piqued by watching YouTube videos, Sustainable Cities Collective reports. Farming became a job, though, after she attended the EcoFarm conference in Monterey, Calif.
From there, she served as the director of the Wrigley Garden – a community garden in Long Beach, Calif., — and went on to co-found Wrigley Co-op Food.
Then came Long Beach Local. The nonprofit biodynamic farm doubles as a training and education center. Its one-acre lot (Farm Lot 59) grows a variety of specialty crops and flowers without a boost from chemicals or pesticides. Farm Lot 59 also boasts egg-laying hens and beehives.
Her work isn’t just for residents, however; she also helps local businesspeople. Every Thursday, Kanno sits down with chefs from the area to plan their menus, and her gardens service six restaurants in Long Beach. Furthermore, she runs a rooftop garden for Michael’s Restaurant Groups, which uses the fresh produce in their restaurants.
When it comes to challenges, there are only two things standing in her way: quality assistance and the bagrada bug. Since Kanno’s work runs on volunteer service, she’s at the mercy of whoever is interested.
“Labor is my biggest challenge,” she tells Sustainable Cities Collective. “It’s hard to find people who are experienced.”
In regards to the bagrada, the insect entered the California scene in 2008 and is especially fond of organic produce, eating just about any crop, while also reproducing quickly and efficiently.
“There’s no organic eradication,” Kanno explains. “The first year it wiped me out. I literally cried.”
Fortunately for Long Beach, Kanno and her crops did survive and continue to thrive. Clearly, neither man nor bug can stop this woman.
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The Savvy People That Are Saving Prescription Drugs From Landfills and Giving Them to Needy Patients
Most of us are aware that Americans waste a lot of food, which has spurred nonprofits like the Food Recovery Network to avert some of that loss and give it to hungry people. But you may not know that Americans also toss out an astonishing amount of perfectly good prescription drugs as well. These drugs end up in landfills, flushed down the toilet or burnt in incinerators where they can harm people or the environment, keeping them from people who could use them.
Fifty percent of the Americans that the Commonwealth Fund surveyed said that they had failed to fill a prescription ordered by their doctors because of the price of the drug, and according to the CDC, 25 percent of Americans struggle with paying their medical bills.
Which is why several crusaders are working to get unused prescription drugs into the hands of people who need them. George Wang, whose Stanford, California-based nonprofit startup Sirum recovers these drugs, calculates that $700 million worth of prescriptions could be saved each year. He talked with Marketplace about “the absurdity of the waste and how gross it is, the fact that it’s raining down on families where these drugs are being burnt. It’s insane, right?”
One of the big culprits is nursing homes. Residents use a lot of prescriptions, but regulations require these facilities to toss prescriptions instead of sharing them between patients. Larry McCarty, a medical waste hauler who works for nursing homes in California describes, “brand new packages that have never been open and still have the saran over the top of them. Whole packages, just sitting in there.”
Sirum has developed software to make it simple for nursing homes to donate leftover drugs, shipping them to pharmacies that will give them to low-income people or those who don’t have insurance.
In Oklahoma, Linda Johnston, the Tulsa County Director of Social Service, heads up a program that involves retired doctors in collecting unused drugs and delivering them to the needy, saving $16 million worth of drugs so far, and countless lives. Johnston talked with Marketplace about one young man who’d received anti-depression medication from the program. “He wanted me to know he was not going to commit suicide, because he had his medication, he could take it.”
MORE: How Much Food Could Be Rescued if College Dining Halls Saved Their Leftovers?
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Across Southern California, This Woman Is Bringing Green
Los Angeles is seeing green, and we’re not talking about not money or jealousy. Instead, we’re referring to grass, and it’s sprouting in unusual spots: vacant lots.
Across L.A. and southern California, From Lot to Spot is taking old abandoned lots and beautifying the space — turning it into community gardens and public parks.
Founder and Executive Director Viviana Franco started the nonprofit back in 2009 after witnessing the lack of public space and fresh, healthy food access in low-income communities. So, she decided to get to work turning old lots into green space and parkland.
“I founded From Lot to Spot seven years ago out of a need in my personal neighborhood Hawthorne and Inglewood ,” Franco tells Sustainable Cities Collective. “There was an abundance of vacant lots. So I went to school to learn.”
The group’s projects include the 118th & Doty Pocket Park in Hawthorne, Larch Avenue Park in Lawndale and the Stanford/Avalon Community Garden in Los Angeles, as well as a mass projection in Riverside. Working with the community, From Lot to Spot helped Riverside improve already existing parks, such as the Tequesquite Community Garden, Arlanza Community Garden and East Side Community Garden at Emerson Elementary School. These are only a few of the many projects on which the group has worked.
From Lot to Spot’s target is low-income food deserts where fresh, local food is scarce and fast-food restaurants and liquor stores thrive. Historically, many of these areas also contain large populations of Hispanics and African Americans.
The hope is that the parks and gardens will reverse the current health trends in these areas of obesity and diabetes and encourage healthy lifestyles. Parks provide a comfortable place for walks and exercise, and community gardens not only offer fresh food, but also boost the local economy, as well.
Although From Lot to Spot has grown over the past eight years, Franco has high hopes for the future as there is still much more work to be done. Her goals include the creation of 20 more farms by 2020, more partnerships with local organizations and increased access to local food in Riverside and Southern California.
“From a health and sustainability standpoint, local food is intrinsic,” Franco says to Sustainable Cities Collective. “There are no geographical limits of low access to healthy foods.”
MORE: This Startup Uses Urban Relics to Serve Up Local Food
For Kids Afraid of Broccoli, This Center Helps Squash Their Fear
You’ve heard about the importance of literacy for reading, for finances (“financial literacy”), and maybe even for math — aka, numeracy — but what about food literacy?
The Food Literacy Center, a nonprofit in Sacramento, Calif., is inspiring kids to become knowledgeable about food in the hopes that they’ll develop life long healthy eating habits.
It opened its doors three years ago, offering classes on cooking and all-around vegetable know-how to children and has become so popular that now, dozens of volunteers work alongside its four full-time employees — reaching 2,400 kids at public libraries, after-school programs and other nonprofits. It specializes in reaching low-income kids and those who qualify for free and reduced lunch. These families often can’t afford fresh produce, leaving their kids inexperienced in everything from carrots to kohlrabi.
At the Food Literacy Center, they learn such facts as how to distinguish fruits — including the frequently misidentified bell pepper — and why whole fruits are better for them than juices and jellies.
The founder of the center, Amber Stott, tells the Sacramento Bee, “Because kids’ eating habits haven’t been firmly formed yet, we have a great opportunity to create healthy eaters, to help these kids become food adventurers and build habits that will last a lifetime.”
The effect of fruit and veggie literacy often extends to the kids’ parents. Evonne Fisher, the mother of a seven-year-old participating in the program, says that before her daughter’s food lessons, neither of them were culinary adventurers. “Before Food Literacy, if I was scared of how a certain food looked, I wouldn’t try it,” she says. “But this has really opened me up. I never would have tried a persimmon before, and now? I love them.”
MORE: This Innovative Idea Brings Produce Directly to Low-Income Neighborhoods
When Skiers Leave Behind Warm Clothing, These Teens Dole It Out to the Homeless
There’s more than a mountain of snow at ski resorts each season, as giant piles of winter coats, mittens, hats and scarves accumulate in the lost-and-found departments.
Back in 2011, two 11-year-old ski racers from the Bay Area, Corinne Hindes and Katherine Kirsebom, noticed these mountains of unclaimed winter wear at Lake Tahoe ski resorts and decided to use them to help less fortunate people.
They didn’t stop with just donating one batch of coats to homeless shelters and other charities, however. The girls founded the nonprofit Warm Winters, and to date, the organization has donated 5,000 pieces of warm clothing to help thousands of homeless people.
Even though Hindes and Kirsebom are still only teenagers, they plan to expand Warm Winters nationally with the help of a 2013 Jefferson Award, given by a foundation that describes itself as “the country’s longest standing and most prestigious organization dedicated to activating and celebrating public service.”
As part of the award, Hindes is studying leadership with the Jefferson Awards Globe Changers Leadership Program. She aims to expand Warm Winters to 10 ski-friendly states, while keeping the program a teen-led initiative as they work with the National Ski Area Association to get it off the ground at 50 or more ski resorts.
Hindes tells TalkingGood, “There was a time a few years back where I saw a homeless man in a T-shirt and jeans on a terribly cold day in winter and I was horrified by how cold he was, and the fact that he had no jacket to shield him from the cold broke my heart. That was a moment where I gained clarity about my purpose because I knew that I had to help him and others like him in any way that I could, and I had to do all that I could to make their situation better. When I gave my first coat to a homeless person, the smile on his face gave me the most rewarding feeling I had ever felt, and it still does today.”
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The Company Helping Businesses Bring About Civic Change
For many, the way to strike change into a system is by running for office or joining a nonprofit. However, while still valuable, there’s a new wave of millennials looking to tackle civic problems from a different angle: business. And it’s these people that business accelerator Tumml is working to make big.
The origins of Tumml can be traced back to a meeting between founders Clara Brenner and Julie Lein at the MIT Sloan School of Management. While there, the two women became intrigued by businesses that had both a social mission and a profit motive.
As a result, the two moved to San Francisco after graduation and formed Tumml in 2012, a business that helps civic minded businesses get off the ground.
Headquartered in the South of Market neighborhood, the company has worked with 17 companies worldwide.
So what does Tumml do for its clients? Well, the purpose is to support “urban impact start-ups” who are looking to improve the functionality of civic systems — whether it is education, transportation or small businesses.
Once selected, Tumml provides each client with initial funding, workspace, mentors, help with managing and operating a business and the chance to meet and work with local government and nonprofit leaders who are addressing the same topics.
Chariot, founded by Ali Vahabzadeh, is one of the startups working with Tumml. Vahabzadeh was amazed by how inefficient the San Francisco transportation system was compared to those in London and New York City, so he started his own company, which services residents in the crowded community corridors of the city.
Tajel Shah is another entrepreneur working with Tumml. The mother of a preschool student, she was aggravated with the application process for private preschools, where a paper application had to be filled out for each individual school. Her company, KidAdmit, streamlines the process by working like the college common app: one online application that can be sent out to Shah’s network of 150 private schools in San Francisco.
For Brenner, these problems are exactly what they are trying to address: the small things that make life tick.
“If you want to solve a problem in your own community, in your own backyard, there isn’t really a place for you to go,” Brenner tells National Journal. “Where would you go find money to do that? I couldn’t have told you two years ago. So we decided an organization to try to change that.”
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Can Texting Help Improve Childhood Literacy?
Parents often have the best intentions to work with their young kids on the alphabet, rhyming words, and other literacy skills. But with the rush to make dinner and get the kids to bed, it can be difficult to carry through on those intentions.
In an effort to provide assistance, Stanford University researchers have developed a program that sends texts providing literacy-development tips to parents of preschoolers, and now, a new study shows that participating in the program improved the kids test scores. At a cost of less than $1 per parent, it’s an affordable intervention that catches parents at moments during the day when they just might find five minutes to squeeze in reading a book with their kids.
The researchers implemented a pilot program, called READY4K!, during the 2013-2014 school year at 31 San Francisco Unified School District (SFUSD) preschools. These facilities that have long collaborated with Stanford as a sort of learning lab — testing the latest education techniques that the researchers develop. Of the 440 families with four-year-olds that participated in the program, half were sent literacy activity and fact texts three times a week such as, “By saying beginning word sounds, like ‘ttt’ in taco & tomato, you’re preparing your child 4 K,” or “Let your child hold the book. Ask what it is about. Follow the words with your finger as you read,” according to Motoko Rich of the New York Times. The other half received texts with school announcements and other placebo messages.
The results? Parents who received the literacy prompts spent more time engaged in reading-related activities with their kids than those in the control group did. Plus, their kids achieved higher scores on literacy tests than did kids in the control group, and that group of parents engaged with teachers more, too.
Susanna Loeb, the director of Stanford’s Center for Education Policy Analysis, tells May Wong of Phys.org, “The barrier to some of these positive parenting practices isn’t knowledge or desire, but it’s the crazy, busy lives. It’s difficult to have the time or focus to make all these choices as parents, and we’re helping parents do what they know they should do and what they want to do.” She also notes, “We know that changing parental behaviors has proven to be very difficult, so to get these positive effects from our texting program was very exciting.”
What might be even more exciting is the fact that this technique works for low-income and minority families, whose children often enter kindergarten with a significant vocabulary gap compared to higher-income peers.
“Parents really are the first teacher that a student has and are the most important teacher at that [early] age,” Loeb tells Wong. “They don’t have to do it the way teachers do it; they just have to work things in with their daily life.”
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For These Inmates, Class Is in Session
At California’s San Quentin Prison, inmates are intensely concentrating on the project at hand: learning the vast world of computer coding and programming.
That’s right, prison inmates now have the opportunity to learn computer skills and develop a business model that can be used upon their release. According to Fast Co. Exist, inmates are enrolled in Code 7370 for six months, a class brought to San Quentin by the nonprofit The Last Mile that teaches inmates about the world of business and entrepreneurship. The class is very selective, with only 18 of 100 applicants accepted.
Class meets four days a week, for eight hours each day, and during that time, inmates learn the ins-and-outs of Javascript, CSS and HTML. Their three instructors are from the San Francisco boot camp Hack Reactor and teach in-person or virtual lessons twice a week. For the other two days each week, the inmates practice their skills under the watch of Jonathon Gripshover of the California Prison Industry Authority.
The computer lab at the prison is stocked with refurbished computers, which used to belong to state employees and are now being used by the student inmates. However, none of the inmates have Internet access, so all of their work is completed in a custom off-line coding environment.
The most startling aspect of the program, perhaps, is that none of the participants have coding experience and many have never even used a computer before.
Jason Jones is one such example. Even though he has never used a smartphone and only used the internet for browsing, he has the plans for an app called In Touch that would instantly upload a student’s test scores and other information for parents to review in order to be more invested in their child’s education.
Once released, job opportunities for former inmates are very limited, but the hope is that through this training, employers will be open to hiring them.
For Aly Tamboura, Code 7370 gives him something he never had before: a marketable skill that makes him attractive to employers.
“I get these a-ha moments where a concept or certain element of what we’re learning makes sense,” Tamboura tells Fast Co. Exist. “When I get out, I’ll have a marketable skill.”
And that’s the greatest benefit of the program — a chance for a better life.
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