Foundation News

Second Harvest of Silicon Valley is one of the largest food banks in the nation and a leader in ending local hunger. The nonprofit distributes nutritious groceries through a network of partners at sites across Santa Clara and San Mateo counties. Due to the high cost of living in Silicon Valley and the economic downturn caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, hunger is at an all-time high. Second Harvest is now serving 500,000 people on average every month, which is twice as many people as they reached pre-pandemic.

The Koret Foundation announced funding for seven Bay Area food banks and meal delivery services, to help groups serving the hungry during the COVID-19 pandemic. The pandemic has caused the number of people requiring assistance to skyrocket. Michael Boskin, president of the Koret Foundation, said that he hopes Koret’s grants will “encourage other donors to do the same.”

Gladstone Senior Investigator Jennifer Doudna, PhD, was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for her transformative discovery of the CRISPR-Cas9 system, along with Emmanuelle Charpentier, PhD. The gene-editing tool allows researchers to cut DNA in order to remove, replace, or add genes to a sequence, and has been adopted around the world to identify therapeutic targets, diagnose viral infection, and repair genetic mutations. Doudna joined Gladstone in 2018 to apply her technology to biomedical problems, while continuing her lab at UC Berkeley, where she has been a professor since 2002.

IsraAid—an Israeli international relief agency that provides aid during crises and natural disasters—is also addressing food insecurity during the coronavirus pandemic. Working locally with Koret grantees Second Harvest of Silicon Valley and the San Francisco-Marin Food Bank, IsraAid is organizing volunteers from the Jewish community to assist in various ways from San Francisco down to San Jose.

On August 13, San Francisco Ballet premiered “Dance of Dreams,” a new dance film by Benjamin Millepied. Shot in iconic San Francisco locations with company dancers, the film is set to “Scène D’Amour” from Hitchcock’s Vertigo, recorded and mixed remotely by more than 60 SF Ballet Orchestra musicians.

As cultural programming adjusts during the COVID-19 pandemic, the San Francisco Symphony is launching “Currents,” a four-part series of online broadcasts exploring the relationships between classical music and other musical traditions, as well as “1:1 Concerts” featuring a single orchestra musician performing for a single listener outdoors at a suitable distance.

As people around the globe struggle to cope with COVID-19 lockdowns, humanitarian aid organization IsraAID offers tips on strengthening resilience and reducing stress, based on extensive experience with psycho-social support during crisis situations.

As part of a series on how different organizations are shifting in light of COVID-19, Fortune interviewed Jamie Simon, Camp Tawonga’s Executive Director, in May. Simon shared Tawonga’s approach to reopening and plans for alternative programming.