STAND! For Families Free of Violence - $25,000 -  Funds used to directly support Emergency Housing, Emergency Lodging and Food for victims of domestic violence and their children in Contra Costa County as we recover from the COVID-19 health pandemic.

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Monument Crisis Center- $25,000 - Fund will be used for their core programs including in particular Food Distribution & Nutrition and Resource & Referral/Health and Wellness supporting thousands of Contra Costa residents. In the last calendar year 2021 they assisted 7,315 individuals who accessed services 53,675 times. There is a need for support staff in pantry, resources and intake to handle the huge numbers of clients coming for assistance of all kinds

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Love Never Fails - $25,000 - MOW Diablo Region expanded their successful Breakfast Bags pilot program, which had been operating in Brentwood and Concord, to serve seniors in Oakley. This program delivered five breakfasts per week to the most vulnerable Meals on Wheels clients. These are seniors who live alone, have no/limited support system, do not drive, are homebound, low-income, and have told them that one meal a day was not enough to keep them from experiencing hunger. They partnered with Davi Produce to purchase the food and package the breakfast bags. Their staff worked with volunteer drivers, who delivered a breakfast bag with a week's worth of healthy, nutritious breakfast items, including fresh fruit, healthy grains, protein, and tea/coffee. Drivers also checked in on seniors during delivery, providing a wellness check. 

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Darius Jones Foundation - $25,000 - Funding to support continued unit operations as they related to COVID-19 response and overall unit readiness. There had been an overwhelming response for medical personnel interested in helping with COVID-19 with 55 new team members added since March, 2020. At the time of the grant, 30 more were in the onboarding process and there were another 100 pending applications. These new members have eagerly stepped in providing their service to the community. CCC MRC has been engaged in numerous activities to support COVID-19 planning and response and the funding ensured the CCC MRC could continue to provide team members with the training and resources needed to respond to disasters and continued COVID-19 operations.

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Child Abuse Prevention Council of CCC - $5,000 - Distribution of reusable cloth masks with testing information in English and Spanish to historically marginalized communities across Contra Costa County. In the County's response to COVID-19, they increased awareness of the essential services offered to the community with a focus on testing sites that could adequately survey and respond to positivity rates as well as protect community members from COVID-19 and Seasonal Flu. The CCHS testing and community engagement branches within Contra Costa Health's COVID-19 emergency response worked collaboratively with community partners, Youth Ambassadors, EHSD, and community based groups working to stop the spread of COVID-19 in historically marginalized communities across Contra Costa County.

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Hijas del Campo - $25,000 - To support the caregivers (minimum wage paid essential direct care workers) in small board and care facilities. Providing training on the rollout of the vaccines to their communities and when a six bed or under facility has 100% participation in the training (some will view live and others can watch the recorded training), they provided bagels, coffee and some swag. This offered incentive to the homes to have full participation and also gave some much needed community love and support to these workers who have shown up everyday in the pandemic to ensure their frail elders don't end up in institutions. Additionally, approximately 350 pulse oximeters were purchased and delivered to small residential care facilities in CCC to help identify residents who were hypoxic due to COVID19. 

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Contra Costa Family Justice Alliance - $25,000 - To build out the existing API Advocacy Coalition website and online presence to promote the work of the Coalition and build community awareness of the Coalition. The website will be translated to several API languages as appropriate. Create two videos and one brochure to share information about the API Coalition. All materials will be translated into several API languages. Build capacity in the underserved Chinese communities by recruiting and training community members to become advocates for change. This will be accomplished through a training program led by trusted community messengers.  Partnering with NAMI Contra Costa to engage with Chinese (Mandarin and Cantonese) trusted community leaders. Organizing two influential leaders to meet with systems and nonprofit partners and exchange knowledge pertaining to best approaches for community advocacy. Afterwards, community leaders will organize training sessions for less experienced community members. The curriculum will include Contra Costa based resources, knowledge, strategies, and solutions for supporting community members who may be facing issues related to COVID-19. Continue to promote, grow, and leverage the existing API Advocacy Coalition as a space and network for pan-API organizing, community building, and advocacy. Coalition provides opportunities, projects, and activities to collaborate on larger, upstream, ongoing, systems change initiatives. Over the last two years they have built partnerships and relationships with more than 20 nonprofit CBO’s, systems partners, and grassroots groups. Members of this coalition were able to support and serve more than 3000 community members to this date with COVID response and outreach efforts.

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NAMI - $20,000 - Funds will help reach individuals living with mental illnesses who are unsheltered. Many of those individuals were chronically homeless and also had a lengthy history of long term alcohol and other drug use.  

NAMI CC looks at root causes and puts plans in place to build trust with these individuals to remove barriers together. They were able to create a program that included regularly supplying food, water, PPE, as well as using funds to allow the individuals we encountered to secure Government ID cards, etc. They were successful with having those who were able, reunify with their worried families etc, and they used their NAMI Educational Programs to support participants to better understand their behavioral health challenges so they could be guided to the most appropriate treatment services to begin their journey to recovery and housing. 

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Loaves and Fishes of CC (LFCC) - $20,000 - For nearly 40 years, LFCC has been serving food to the community. The program has grown to having five dining rooms throughout Contra Costa County, providing a food pantry at each dining room and by having other community partners who provide additional safety-net services come into our dining rooms to serve our guests. LFCC’s dining rooms are located in Martinez, Pittsburg, Antioch, Oakley and Walnut Creek. LFCC also provides hot meals to partner agencies with facilities in Antioch and Concord. LFCC has served more than 5.3 million meals. This grant will help support the increase in cost of the biodegradable to-go containers.

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La Clinica de La Raza, Inc. - $25,000 - One of the major strategies that has been instrumental at increasing COVID-19 vaccination and testing in La Clínica’s Contra Costa service area has been the ongoing involvement of volunteer Promotoras. Volunteer Promotoras have complimented the work of their essential health care workers by building capacity of street outreach at local community base organizations, churches, schools, and neighborhoods to promote local vaccination events. During La Clínica’s Mobile Team’s vaccination events, Promotoras have supported key roles including patient registration, line control, patient observation and providing resource information. Information and resources provided during these events include information about food, Cal-Fresh, housing and enrollment assistance. Promotoras also conduct calls to unvaccinated patients to book vaccine appointments. During these calls, the main area of need identified was access to transportation to get to their appointment. Funds were utilized to provide monthly stipends for the volunteer Promotoras. Funding also supported the Community Health Education Department piloting a project to offer transportation assistance through Uber Health to patients and community members who need transportation support to get to their vaccine and testing appointments.

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White Pony Express - $25,000 - Like so many organizations, WPE has seen tremendous change over the last two years as the COVID pandemic tested their team and beloved volunteers. Increased need for services pushed food deliveries to nearly triple compared to the beginning of 2020. Fortunately they were able to pivot operations and respond to this need with the same number of staff, budget, and physical space. They even added 15 new recipients who set up emergency food pantries in the community. However, they still face many challenges, including supply chain disruptions and skyrocketing food prices, which have caused daily deliveries to fall from the peak levels at the height of the pandemic. This grant helped with a long-overdue maintenance on their fleet of 10 refrigerated vehicles and equipment (coolers, freezer, pallet jacks, and forklifts), fuel, cardboard boxes and food safety supplies for our food deliveries, and fees associated with composting and recycling.

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Building Blocks for Kids - $10,000 - The consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic has had a negative impact on the emotional and mental wellbeing of many Black and Latinx communities. Contra Costa County lacks affordable and culturally competent services for those experiencing emotional wellbeing challenges that contribute to chronic stress, distress, and trauma but are not deemed severe or as emergencies. BBK’s healing-centered care and multigenerational approach support parents and caregivers to achieve emotional, mental and physical wellness while concurrently recognizing the systemic and environmental causes of personal and community trauma. Numerous researchers have concluded that a parent’s response to stressors is much more important than the stressor itself in determining the outcomes for themselves and their children. Our BIPOC community-centered programming has demonstrated that there is a need for culturally centered wellness care for African American and Latinx parents/caregivers living in Richmond and West Contra Costa County. The funds will be utilized to support our three sanctuary groups a Black Women’s Sanctuary group, a Latina Sanctuary group, and a Men’s Sanctuary called “Holding Space.” Sanctuaries are intimate, culturally responsive monthly sessions for residents to receive support for individual and family healing, emotional well-being, and wellness. Participants self-report an appreciation for their peers and the opportunity to have a space where they can feel safe and heard. Ultimately through our wellness work, we are increasing the ability of Sanctuary participants to handle stress, receive peer support, welcome self-care, and feel more confident in caring for themselves and their families. The funding will support the expansion of our free life coaching program for Black and Latinx women and men, who are primarily mothers and fathers. During the coaching sessions, participants identify areas of growth and create a wellness plan for themselves. The coaching sessions are individualized and based on the needs of each participant who need individualized care to achieve their individual and family goals.

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Richmond Rapid Response Fund (R3) - $25,000 - Direct $500 cash grants to Richmond residents to support basic needs access

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United Latino Voices - $20,000 - The funds will be used to increase the knowledge, trust and utilization of health, education and financial resource benefits and services by West, Central and East Contra Costa County Latinx residents who have been so disproportionally impacted by the COVID pandemic and for who these resources will be vital if they are to fully recover from the COVID pandemic.

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Planned Parenthood Northern California - $15,000 - Funding enabled PPNorCal to partner with Monument Impact, Hijas del Campo, One Day at a Time, and the Monument Crisis Center to provide vital food, hygiene supplies, and educational brochures to over 400 Spanish-speaking youth, adults, and families in Contra Costa County. Together with Contra Costa Regional Health Foundation and these four organizations, PPNorCal’s Promotores delivered essential supplies to the most vulnerable members of the county, including immigrant, undocumented, refugee, low-income, and seasonal farmworker communities. Promotores assembled 400 bags of much needed food, hygiene supplies, and educational brochures and distributed them to their partners’ clients. The average family size in California is 2.94, increasing the potential reach to at least 1,176 individuals. Promotores are Latinx community health workers trained by PPNorCal’s Education Team to help close health inequity gaps among Spanish-speaking communities in Contra Costa County. They live in and reflect the communities they serve. Most Promotores lost employment during the COVID-19 pandemic and understand the challenges that their fellow community members face. Launching projects such as this one motivates them to address food insecurity in their communities, which has dramatically worsened due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

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The One Accord Project - $23,000 - It has come to One Accord Project leaders’ attention that many who have received their distributed COVID19 rapid tests have had some difficulty administering these tests and the organization evaluated this issue as critical and another barrier to those who need these tests. Additionally, in the midst of a surge of the Omicron variant, they had a shortage of home tests, so it is imperative that communities of Color who are “under tested” have access to the test infomercials using trusted messengers in the Community to demonstrate their proper use. With this funding, the One Accord Project will produce infomercials using trusted messengers such as Clergy and Community leaders accompanied by a physician or medical professional (County Medical Professional) going thru the process of how to administer the test step by step. (They will also have a sign language interpreter for those who are hearing impaired). They would also include contact information on the infomercial to contact the County for further medical assistance if needed.

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RYSE Center - $25,000 - In 2020, RYSE created a Youth COVID-19 Direct Supports Fund to meet the acute and persistent needs among young people they serve - needs that were heightened and entrenched through the past two years of the pandemic. From this fund, they have directly provided over 500 - $500 disbursements to-date, including youth participants impacted and hospitalized by gun violence, engaged in our Restorative Justice Diversion program, and who are experiencing homelessness. RYSE staff and therapists worked directly with young people to identify needs, and provide acute financial support as needed, as well as comprehensive wellbeing care. The circumstances young people are navigating continue to bring to bear the severe lack of economic security they carry, as well as their lack of access to welcoming and helpful financial institutions and systems. In our intake forms, rent housing, food, utilities continue to be main areas where financial crises are felt and support is needed. In all cases where mental health support was indicated as a need, RYSE staff followed up and coordinated care. These grant funds will be utilized to continue this process, and provide direct $500 payments to young people in crisis. 

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Fred Finch Youth and Family Services - $19,000 - Fred Finch Youth & Family Services operates two Contra Costa-specific programs for children, youth and families: Contra Costa County School Based Services, and Contra Costa Transition Age Youth. The Contra Costa County School Based Services (CCC SBS) program serves approximately 170 concurrent participants (200 annually) at 10 Contra Costa school sites. School Based Services are a full-service therapy program designed to help youth in elementary through high school to learn to succeed in school, improve their grades, attendance and interpersonal relationships with their peers and families. The Contra Costa Transition Age Youth (CCTAY) Program works with young adults, aged 18-25, who live in West and Central Contra Costa County and who experience serious mental health challenges. These young adults may also have myriad of other challenges, including homelessness, co-occurring substance use, exposure to trauma, difficulty maintaining engagement in school and employment, high turnover in housing, involvement with the legal system, and experience with Psychiatric Emergency Services. More than 95% of the children, youth, and families that Fred Finch serve live below state and federal poverty levels; the ramifications of the COVID-19 pandemic have had outsize impact on this population. Beyond more precarious status of employment and access to resources, the ongoing surge in inflation has had dramatic negative effects on low-income populations in the Bay Area. This grant will be used to provides $80.00 to each of the 241 participants in our Contra Costa to assist with grocery costs and transportation costs. These funds will go directly to participants and their families to assist with urgent expenses and ease the pressure of rising inflation.

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The Contra Costa Clubhouses, Inc - $12,000 - 95% of the program participants (members) live on SSDI/SSI and are below poverty level. They have members with holes in their shoes, holes in their clothes, and may not even have a warm jacket to wear. Members do not have the funds to utilize the transportation system to get around to needed appointments, services, and programming, so they stay isolated in their homes. Some cannot always get their needed prescriptions because they do not have the co-pay. Other members need a deposit and/or rent for housing, often leaving them in a bad situation they may be in. This grant will be used to create a fund for our program participants (members). Members will be able to request deposit/rental assistance, transportation assistance, medication assistance, and clothing assistance. Most importantly, the process to obtain the assistance will be without complicated barriers. We will set up a request process that immediately makes the funds available when needed.

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CCHS Community Wellness YYA - 25,000 - The focus for this grant is to: 1) Reset Better to a New Normal" through a variety of micro learning and mindfulness exercises that promote renewal and connections (resilience building and strengthening, stress management, etc.), including nutrition and better sleep tips. 2) Sustain the gains of our “Get Moving, Keep Moving” campaign last year, 2021 by offering uplifting well-intentioned sessions that promote cardio fitness, strength, and flexibility, including recovery that will make daily moves easier (Yoga, Tai Chi, Cardio, Walking, Stretching, All Levels). 3) Expand our wellness touch points in the community by encouraging our staff to include their family members and/or friends in our virtual wellness sessions and start building mini communities of wellness; strategically scheduling the sessions at a convenient time; recording the sessions to promote reuse, inclusivity, and maximum reach; opening up the virtual wellness webinar sessions to the community similar to our Yoga for the Public session last year.

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CCHS Wellness Team - $25,000 - The CCHS COVID-19 YYA Program, led by the Community Wellness & Prevention Program’s (CW&PP) Tobacco Prevention Program and CCHS Health Career Pathways staff, trained 25 youth and young adults ages 15-24 to educate their peers, family, and social media followers about COVID-19 in 2020. YYA COVID-19 mitigation messaging for the social media campaigns are in alignment with guidance from the CCHS Health Officer, Centers for Disease Control (CDC), and the California Department of Public Health (CDPH). While based in science, data, and fact, the messages were and continue to be crafted by the YYA’s themselves as it is their authentic voice which will resonate with their followers. The COVID-19 YYA’s commit to 35 hours or 6 months in the program, and they receive a stipend of $525 for their time.

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The Latina Center - $15,000 - Many people in our community are still reeling from the physical and mental health and

socioeconomic impacts of the pandemic. These funds will be used to distribute food boxes and provide financial assistance to families who have had no other access to relief funds for rent/mortgage assistance, medicine, utilities.

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St. Vincent de Paul - $25,000 - St. Vincent de Paul of Contra Costa County provides basic needs for struggling residents of Contra Costa, providing support to those dealing with challenges. They provide food, shelter, rental & utility assistance, medical & dental care and more. 

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