President Emily Matthews called the meeting to order at 12:15.

 

This Week: Doug Person led the Pledge of Allegiance. Former President Cheri DeLacy led the invocation. She talked about how we’ve all navigated COVID over the past 14 months. Cheri relied on Rotary’s Four Pillars as she had to pull back from the Club to focus on supporting her business and her employees this past year.  She wished everyone continued strength and caring for each other and gave a special mention to Delia Montano, who lost her husband to COVID, and Pierre Bouquet, who lost his sister.

 

Announcements: Doug Person introduced his guest, and today’s speaker, Theo Ellington. Ray Larios introduced himself. Ray is a new Burlingame Planning Commissioner who is originally from Honduras. His parents were lifelong Rotarians, and his neighbor is Marc Friedman.  Masih Madani from Reno South Rotary also joined us.

 

President Emily gave us some important reminders:

 

 

Paul Harris Awards:  Bill Tiedeman presented some Paul Harris awards for the Rotary Foundation. Before announcing the award recipients, Bill asked Emily to play a video from the PBS News Hour about the Navajo Nation in New Mexico and efforts to bring water to the residents, many of whom don’t have access to running water. A group called Dig Deep is drilling community wells and bringing clean, running water to residents. Local Rotary Clubs are assisting with funding. Bill then announced that Marc Friedman is in line for a Paul Harris +2 award (his third award). Cheryl Fama received a +1 award (her second award) and Francis Boscacci received a +1 award (her second award). Congrats all around!

 

Newscast+: Fritz Brauner told us that today is National Devil’s Food Cake. Yum! Also, yesterday was National Visit Your Relatives Day. President Emily’s parents came to visit. She and her family had a nice time staying in Carmel with her parents, whom she hadn’t seen since last summer. Fritz advised us all to pick our favorite relative for next year’s National Visit Your Relatives Day.

 

Fritz is up in Sea Ranch and saw some grads in caps and gowns taking pictures. He started thinking about how high school puts a major stamp on your life. So given that it’s graduation time, Fritz started reminiscing about high school memories, like learning to drive a car. He asked for unusual learning-to-drive-a-car stories.  Christine Krolik told us that her dad took her to a parking lot of a grocery store on a Sunday because the store was closed. She remembers her father yelling, “stop, stop, stop, stop!” Fritz then asked for teaching-your-kids-to-drive stories. Christine Krolik said she was gripping the door while teaching her kid. Suzanne Juptner said it took a long time to teach her kids to drive. Her first kid had to learn to drive a standard car, on a slope. Yikes! For her second kid, also driving a standard car, she hired a driving instructor who immediately took her kid up Black Mountain Road to 280. Yikes again! Mike Kimball said that in 1957 or 1958, a female classmate of his was driving with an instructor in the car next to her. She drove over a cardboard box at some point, and the instructor said, “How did you know there wasn’t a baby in that box?” Mike has never forgotten that and has been frightened of cardboard boxes on the freeway ever since!

 

Doug Person reintroduced Theo Ellington. Theo is working on a homeless services initiative for the Salvation Army called “The Way Out”. Theo spoke to the Club in December 2019, and today’s program is an update on his work. First, however, he talked about the Salvation Army’s homeless feeding program during COVID. When COVID first hit, they brought food to 52 different homeless encampments in San Francisco. That program then pivoted to sanctioned tent encampments. That was a strategy to get folks off the streets. The Salvation Army provided 3 meals a day, 7 days a week to these encampments. They worked with local restaurants on this initiative, which helped the restaurants stay afloat.

 

The Salvation Army has served SF’s poor and homeless since 1883. They are one of SF’s largest nonprofit landowners and provide food, addiction treatment, and other services. They’re now focusing on a new approach to solving homelessness in a system that seems broken. There is a lot of money coming to the Bay Area for homeless services. Homeless individuals suffering from addiction are often caught in a vicious cycle of treatment and relapse with no exit. Homeless people often go into a short-term drug treatment program, but don’t have enough support once they leave the treatment program. They relapse and fall into a deeper state of homelessness because they do not receive enough stability and support.  Theo says that with 2-3 years of support, success rates for overcoming addiction leap from 10% to 90%. The more support people have for a longer time, the higher the likelihood of success. Their programs offer a continuum-of-care so their clients never have to go back on the street.

 

They have identified six of their properties in SF that they want to redevelop and repurpose. One property will offer mental health respite services. They have the capacity to add 1600 new beds to the network. Now they’re figuring out how to distribute those beds among the various properties and which property to build first. They’re also working on helping clients rejoin the workforce through state-credentialed job training and apprenticeships. And they’re teaching important life skills using certified counselors, fellow members, outside mentors, and skills instructors. They are now working on building out the program and raising $4.2 million to be able to scale their programs across San Francisco.

 

Theo’s contact info is theo.ellington@usw.salvationarmy.org. More information about the program can be found at www.thewayoutsf.org.

 

Club members had some great questions for Theo and thanked him for the presentation and all the good work the Salvation Army is doing to address this difficult problem.

 

President Emily closed out the meeting a little after 1:30 and presented Theo with a certificate.