Tag Archives: Jeff Weston

December 4, 2015 · 11:34 am

PennServes Picks Packs of Peppers at Westside Food Bank

Penn Serves LA visited the Westside Food Bank in Santa Monica on October 24 to lend a hand. Here is the report of their day by Jane Gutman, CW’73, PAR’14, PAR’16.

18,000 pounds of fresh pears, apples and peppers arrived yesterday, to everyone’s surprise, at the Westside Food Bank. In a few days it would rot… Quakers to the rescue!

Feeling pumped following last night’s under-the-lights football win over Yale, over twenty-five members of the Penn family met at the Westside Food Bank to pitch in for another worthy and enjoyable Penn Serves LA project. The food bank distributes 4.5 million pounds of food each year to 70 local social service agencies. Half of this food is donated through collection drives by churches, synagogues, schools, the mail carriers, etc., and in addition, the Westside Food Bank purchases an average of $16,500 worth of nutritious food each week. We were shown a moving video about the work of the Food Bank, the grateful recipients, and the importance of distributing healthy foods: more produce and protein, less sugar and fat.

We were shocked to learn that the beautiful food we gleaned and packed today would have been thrown out by farmers were it not for the Food Bank’s efforts to collect healthy produce to assist our food insecure friends in LA. They pay a small amount to have this food trucked in, and whenever it arrives they need to quickly sort it and box it so that people can “shop” at local agencies for wonderful farm fresh fruits and vegetables.

The Quakers built and filled boxes and worked in the hot sun to get the job done. As usual, we had all ages and all schools represented. The time flew by and the last box of peppers found its way into the cooler – we took care of 18,000 pounds of produce and felt good knowing a few thousand people would enjoy healthy snacks this week because of our efforts.

About Penn Serves LA

We invite the Penn community in Los Angeles (alumni, parents and kids) to join us at a future event, to help spread the word and to help us plan future activities. Join us, meet new Penn people, demonstrate what service means to your kids and friends, and help fellow Quakers make a little bit of difference in our complex city!

Upcoming Penn Serves LA events:

December 6, 2015 – Midnight Mission – DTLA – SOLD OUT
January 9, 2016 – Dress for Success – DTLA
March 12, 2016 – LA Bunny Rescue Mobile Adoption – Culver City
May 7, 2016 – Gardening at Heroes Golf Course at the VA – West side
June 18, 2016 – Richstone Family Program – Hawthorne/South Bay
September 10, 2016 – Read to Kids at ICEF School – DTLA
November 12, 2016 – LA Kitchen – DTLA

If you have an established nonprofit that you would like us to consider for future events or announcements, please let us know. We are looking for new nonprofits to serve in meaningful ways.

Questions? Want to join our email list? Reach us at pennserves@gmail.com. Like us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter!

The Penn Serves LA Team

Penn Serves LA has many terrific projects for all ages on the calendar for the coming months.

Read about our previous events:

September, 2015 – Penn Serves LA Reads to Kids
July, 2015 – Penn Serves LA: Harvesting a Garden for Veterans
June, 2015 – Penn Serves LA Spruces up a New Charter School
June, 2015 – Penn Serves LA Has the Giving Spirit
August, 2014 – Penn Serves LA Strikes Again: This Time with Paint!
December, 2013 – Holidays are a Time for Giving
November, 2013 – Sending Holiday Warmth to our Troops
August and September, 2013 – Serving the Environment and LA Leadership Academy
May, 2013 – One on One Outreach
March, 2013 – Habitat for Humanity
January, 2013 – Inner City Arts
September, 2012 – The Midnight Mission
June, 2012 – Turning Point Shelter

See the video about the WestSide Food Bank:

Penn Serves LA: Harvesting a Garden for Veterans

By Jane Gutman, CW’73, PAR’14, PAR’16

In the midst of our intense and bustling city of somewhere between 13 and 18 million people, we find a few parks and refuges from the crowds. And for those whose budgets won’t allow for multi-thousand dollar initiation fees, there are also a handful of golf courses where anyone can pay to play. Penn Serves LA enjoyed the convergence of many treats for our recent project in July. We gathered at a wonderful, pastoral spot, which is also a golf course open to the public AND we had a bit of summer rain – a real slice of LA heaven.

With gardening gloves and trowels in hand, thirty-odd alumni, friends and children brought the raised bed gardens at the Veteran Administration’s Heroes Golf Course back to life. No special skills were needed to hoe, weed, trim, harvest, re-plant and re-stake these beds, and it was the most satisfying work. After less than three hours our Quakers had literally transformed the gardens from their sad state of affairs, to flourishing boxes of green glory…and in the process we picked basket after basket of zucchini, eggplant, tomatoes, herbs and more.

The Executive Director of the Heroes Golf Course, Bruce Rosen, provided the group with a wonderful history of the VA in Brentwood. The golf facility itself, a 9-hole 3-par course, is most inviting and now all the more so because it is ringed by healthy raised vegetable beds, the produce of which is offered to any veterans who choose to come by and partake.

We are grateful to Bruce and his associate Aviva for providing us with plentiful mulch, plants, tools and enthusiasm …and to the vets who worked alongside of our Penn volunteers. We hope people will support our veterans and this course by coming out to play a round, and meanwhile check out the fruits (and vegetables) of some fine Penn gardening labors…and let’s all hope for a little more rain!

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About Penn Serves LA

Upcoming Penn Serves LA events:

Saturday, October 24, 2015 – Westside Food Bank – only a few spots remain!
Sunday, December 6, 2015 – Midnight Mission: Serving Meals to the Homeless

If you have an established nonprofit that you would like us to consider for future events or announcements, please let us know. We are looking for new nonprofits to serve in meaningful ways.

Questions? Reach us at pennserves@gmail.com. Like us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter!

The Penn Serves LA Team

Penn Serves LA has many terrific projects for all ages on the calendar for the coming months.

Read about our previous events:

September, 2015 – Penn Serves LA Reads to Kids
June, 2015 – Penn Serves LA Spruces up a New Charter School
June, 2015 – Penn Serves LA Has the Giving Spirit
August, 2014 – Penn Serves LA Strikes Again: This Time with Paint!
December, 2013 – Holidays are a Time for Giving
November, 2013 – Sending Holiday Warmth to our Troops
August and September, 2013 – Serving the Environment and LA Leadership Academy
May, 2013 – One on One Outreach
March, 2013 – Habitat for Humanity
January, 2013 – Inner City Arts
September, 2012 – The Midnight Mission
June, 2012 – Turning Point Shelter

Penn Serves LA Strikes Again; This Time With Paint

By Leanne Huebner, W’90

Photos by Kiera Reilly, C’93

Over thirty Penn Alumni and their children joined together for a fun beautification project for El Nido Family Centers in Mission Hills. We were thrilled that Elizabeth Fields, Julie Gutowski and Kiera Reilly from the Penn Western Regional Office joined us. And we welcomed special guests in town from campus Penn Professor David Grossman, Ph.D., Director, Civic House and Civic Scholars Program, and Katie McCarthy from the Penn Development Office, both lending their painting skills for good.

All in all, the team completed the center’s foyer, a key event room, as well as a hallway in bright white. The highlight for many participants was contributing to a full wall-sized canvas mural alongside the Pacoima mural artist. Volunteers brought together her vision for a grand-scale masterpiece to add cheer and interest in the center’s main lobby area.

Stuart Berton, El Nido Board President and Wharton ’61 graduate, thanked the team and provided a great overview of the important work of El Nido, a nonprofit that has served Los Angeles for 89 years. Each year, the centers reach over 11,000 Los Angelenos through its community outreach, early education and teen pregnancy initiatives, and gang-prevention programming. While many individuals come to the center, El Nido social workers are also in the field meeting individuals and assessing families in their homes and schools.

Penn Serves LA’s Jane Gutman with El Nido’s Stuart Berton

A few highlights of their work were shared. For instance, their GRYD program for gang-prevention has experienced success rates of up to 98% working with at-risk youth. Their teen pregnancy recidivism rate is 80% lower than the national average, with only 4% of teenage mothers they serve having a second child before they turn twenty years old.

Penn Serves LA’s Leanne Huebner is thrilled with the event.

“We are excited to help El Nido with such a great, enthusiastic group of volunteers,” shares Jane Gutman, CW’73, PAR’14, PAR’16, one of the Penn Serves LA Directors and coordinator of this event. “And to have David and Katie here from Penn lending a hand makes our day of brightening the facility with fresh paint all the better.”

View all the photos from the day here.

The entire group poses to celebrate a job well done!

The next Penn Serves’ event will be Saturday, August 9th from 9 a.m. to noon and you can reserve your spot here. Penn will be serving LA Waterkeepers in an effort to help identify the impact of debris on our area’s water supply. “It’s a great opportunity for your science-minded side as we will be surveying and collecting valuable data,” shares Christine Belgrad, W’87, PAR’15, PAR’17, event coordinator.
Many of the past Penn Serves sell out, so please reserve your spot quickly.

Read about our past events:

December, 2013 – Holidays are a Time for Giving

November, 2013 – Sending Holiday Warmth to our Troops

August and September, 2013 – Serving the Environment and LA Leadership Academy

May, 2013 – One on One Outreach

March, 2013 – Habitat for Humanity

January, 2013 – Inner City Arts

September, 2012 – The Midnight Mission

June, 2012 – Turning Point Shelter