News

Get to know the garden experts that make our parks beautiful Jason Martinez and Pat Quinn are gardeners and horticulturists for the San Francisco Recreation & Parks Department. They met when they were both working at the SF Botanical Garden, and have each been with Rec & Parks for over 20 years. We asked them […]

In partnership with Zelenska’s national mental health initiative, IsraAid is sending teams of Israeli trauma specialists to Ukraine for several weeks at a time. Read the full story on eJewish Philanthropy.

Responding to a dire lack of basic water access for people experiencing homelessness, St. Anthony’s has opened a Hygiene Hub, where guests can shower, use the restroom, and do their laundry in a safe, calm environment. Housed in St. Anthony’s building on 150 Golden Gate Avenue, the new facility promises to be a game-changer, providing 20,000 showers and 10,000 laundered loads annually.

The San Francisco-Marin Food Bank celebrated the groundbreaking of an expansion to its San Francisco warehouse, which will add an additional 32,000 square feet of space to respond to skyrocketing need and expand fresh produce offerings. Watch on ABC7:

After a complete renovation, the new Lisa & Douglas Goldman Tennis Center in Golden Gate Park is open and bustling with activity, with state of the art public courts to practice and play. It is also home to the Koret Tennis & Learning Center, which provides academic support, mentorship, and tennis instruction for middle schoolers from underserved neighborhoods in San Francisco.

The COVID-19 pandemic has caused an unprecedented surge in the need for food assistance in San Francisco and Marin. With unemployment still record high, more people than ever need access to healthy food. The San Francisco-Marin Food Bank is now serving more than 56,000 households each week, nearly double the number helped before the pandemic. With community support, the Food Bank is able to continue to provide access to nutritious food that is essential to keeping our community healthy.

Alameda County Community Food Bank has been at the forefront of local hunger relief efforts for 35 years. Before COVID-19, 1 in 5 County residents was experiencing or at risk of hunger. The need has now doubled, with the hardest impact on working families with children and seniors. Food distribution has increased by 50% in response: they will provide more than 50 million pounds this year through a network of 300 non-profit agency partners, schools, contactless drive-through distributions, and home-delivery.

Since 1970, Meals on Wheels San Francisco has provided homebound seniors with what they need to live independent and dignified lives—nutritious meals prepared and delivered to their homes, professional social work services including wellness and safety checks, and a friendly visitor. Now in its 50th year, the nonprofit has opened a new industrial kitchen and distribution facility after the previous one reached its meal-making capacity limits at 8,000 meals daily. The new kitchen, located in The Sangiacomo Flynn Building, will accommodate the production of up to 30,000 nutritious meals daily.

GLIDE is a nationally recognized center for social justice, dedicated to fighting systemic injustices, creating pathways out of poverty and crisis, and transforming lives. Through its free meals program, integrated comprehensive services, advocacy initiatives, and inclusive community, GLIDE empowers individuals, families and children to achieve stability and thrive. GLIDE is on the forefront of addressing society’s most pressing issues, including poverty, housing and homelessness, and racial and social justice.

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.

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.

The COVID-19 virus has upended life for individuals and communities everywhere. The pandemic has spread not only infection, but also wide-reaching uncertainty as to when “normal life” might resume. In the San Francisco Bay Area, Koret grantees innovated quickly in response to the mandate to shelter in place and to socially distance. Unlike in previous […]