Foundation News

Meeting critical community needs, Urban Adamah is now delivering fresh produce previously distributed through its weekly Farm Stand to several Berkeley congregations to help them meet the needs of their elderly members. It is also sharing its produce with local organizations like Consider the Homeless and the Ashby Community Garden for distribution.

Amid the COVID-19 pandemic, the San Francisco YMCA has opened four free pop-up camps that serve 100 children of essential workers with jobs in hospitals, grocery stores, and the police.

Gov. Gavin Newsom has suggested that live performing arts and other cultural events were unlikely to return in full force for several months, presenting a long-term threat for arts and entertainment organizations. Art leaders are rethinking the offerings they provide to patrons. According to San Francisco Opera General Director Matthew Shilvock, “we are prepared to connect with our audiences in whatever creative ways we can – even if it’s all digital.”

With classes canceled and teaching labs empty, two Cal graduate students are using an idle biology lab to produce home-made hand sanitizer. Over the past four weeks, they have made 400 gallons of home brew to distribute to homeless shelters, senior centers, and nursing homes around the Bay Area.

“Diary from the Ashes,” a documentary by local filmmaker Yoav Potash, has been awarded a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities. A Koret supported project, the film focuses on the life of Rywka Lipszyc, a 14-year old Jewish Polish girl whose diary was discovered at Auschwitz.

As first responders to the COVID-19 outbreak, Jewish Family & Children’s Services continues to serve the community through urgent home health care, counseling, meal and grocery delivery, no-interest loans and grants for individuals, families, and small businesses, and calls to isolated community members. Requests for help are now at unprecedented levels.

Santa Clara University’s School of Engineering recently launched the “Rapid Response to Acute Humanitarian Crises” project and started manufacturing key parts of medical face shields for local hospitals. In coordination with local maker groups, faculty, staff, and students are using 11 3D printers in the School’s Maker Lab at a capacity of 100 sets of face shield parts each week.

While the museum’s doors are closed to the public, the Exploratorium is supporting the front lines of the Covid-19 pandemic. The museum collected n95 masks and other personal protective equipment (PPE) from its science labs to donate to the staff at Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital. Their engineers have also devised a 3D printing process that can produce hospital face shields in minutes, and plan to make 200 pieces a day and publish the designs for others to use.

With theater productions canceled amid coronavirus concerns, costume departments are putting their skills to use by making cloth masks to help prevent the spread of the disease. With shortages of protective equipment, local hospitals are accepting donations of reusable, hand-sewn masks for non-patient care staff. (Photo credit: Jim Gensheimer, Special to The Chronicle)

Completed prior to the coronavirus outbreak, USC Shoah Foundation’s Dimensions in Testimony is featured by CBS’s 60 Minutes, enabling people to ask questions that prompt real-time responses from pre-recorded video interviews with Holocaust survivors. Soon there will be no one left with firsthand accounts, and Dimensions in Testimony harnesses today’s technologies to share these experiences with future generations. (Photo credit: CBS 60 Minutes)