Local Involvement
Kiwanis Helps Meet Community Challenges in 2025
Throughout the year, speakers from many community groups pay us visits to let us know what they do and to update us on how they hope to do even more in the future. Here are just a few of the groups that visited us this fall.
There With Care, a group Tim Wright works with, joined us for lunch to tell us more about its activities and how a recent donation from our club helped them help many more people. “There With Care of the Bay Area” is located in Redwood City and San Francisco and serves families at Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital Stanford and UCSF Benioff Children’s Hospital San Francisco.
Street Life Ministries is a non-denominational organization with roots in the historic Christian faith. It’s a “no walls necessary” ministry that depends on volunteers and donors to serve the homeless and at-risk populations of the Mid-Peninsula. Street Life Ministries is banding together with a handful of local organizations to launch a twelve-month Christian rehab program that will take homeless people struggling with addiction and help them fully recover and rejoin society.
Paws For Purple Hearts in Menlo Park is part of a nationwide service dog organization that pioneered Canine-Assisted Warrior Therapy® (CAWT) 
for Service Members and Veterans. Dedicated to improving the lives of veterans, Paws for Purple Hearts provides quality service dogs and canine-assisted programs to veterans facing mobility challenges, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI), and other trauma-related conditions. All services and programs are provided to veterans at no cost. As a non-profit located at the VA Facility in Menlo Park, it recruits individuals and families to become foster parents to the service dogs during their training.
‘Tis The 2025 Holiday Season!
We joined other Kiwanis Clubs and Key Clubs in Kiwanis Division 34 on Saturday, November 15th to participate in the 15 th Annual Nourishing Neighbors Holiday Campaign. Sponsored by NBC Bay Area, Safeway/Albertson grocery stores, and Second Harvest of Silicon Valley, this campaign makes a significant impact in our community by supporting those in need during the holiday season and beyond. Several of our members volunteered in this vital one-day food drive. The funds raised through this campaign directly support Bay Area food banks, a coalition of six nonprofit organizations serving 13 counties in Northern California.
The Annual Nourishing Neighbors Campaign in 2025 included major holiday drives by Safeway/Albertsons (raising millions) and ongoing initiatives by the Albertsons Companies Foundation, focusing on local food banks to combat hunger, with local efforts in the Bay Area (NBC Bay Area, Telemundo 48) running through December 2025, supporting families for the holidays and year-round.
Thousands of dedicated volunteers were positioned outside Safeway stores across the Bay Area in November, distributing flyers and encouraging shoppers to donate just $10 at checkout. This small contribution can help combat hunger and food insecurity for our neighbors who are struggling.
Help For Two Families
Our Kiwanis Club members received Christmas lists from two families, thanks to Levantar (formerly Generations United). The lists contained many items that would make each family’s holidays much brighter. Items included vacuum cleaners, stuffed toys and clothing for children and their parents. Our members responded with the gifts asked for and then some—just in time for Santa to deliver them to the two families.”Levantar” is a versatile Spanish (and Portuguese) verb meaning to lift, raise, or pick up, and that’s the mission of this organization—to build intergenerational collaboration in communities and to support grandfamilies.
Menlo-Atherton High School Football Program Receives $10,000 Kiwanis Club Grant
John Pinkston (left) of the Menlo Park Kiwanis Club presented Menlo-Atherton High School Coach Chris Sanders a check for $10,000 at a luncheon in mid-January. Most of the funds will help send promising players to football camps during the summer. The Club made two other donations of $5,000 each in 2018 and 2019 to support the football team.
Menlo Park Kiwanis Club members around the table are (facing the camera from far left) Bill Zonner, Doug Scott, Brian Rigonan, Coach Chris Sanders, Tim Wright and Bruce Wellings. Others (with their backs to the camera from far left) are John Pinkston George Chaltas, Louise Dedera, Jan Gabus and Tom Curran.
Kiwanis Grants Help Several Organizations
Our club recently gave a total of $45,000 in various donations to support Grateful Garments. Generations United, There With Care and the Menlo-Atherton Football Scholarship Program.
In addition, Club members will participate in several volunteer activities during the holidays.
Menlo Park Kiwanis Club Spreads Holiday Cheer To Many This Year
Menlo Park’s Kiwanis Club recently announced its support for two new local programs—Able Works and RISE (Reaching & Inspiring Success through Education).
“We are making a $7,000 donation to Able Works to support its programs that provide culturally relevant life skills and financial education programs to high school students during a critical time of their lives—to help students transition from high school to college, junior college, or career,” said Louise DeDera, Kiwians Club President.
The Kiwanis club also will continue to support Menlo Atherton High School’s Key Club, a student service organization. “In fact, we just volunteered on Saturday with its members to put together more than 10,000 food packs, each containing 6 meals. Menlo College provided the facility for us to assemble the packets, and they are being distributed this holiday season to local residents in need by RISE Against Hunger,” she continued. The club also donated $3800 to RISE, covering the cost of the event, and treating the volunteers to pizza at the end.
Able Works, RISE and the Key Club are all focused on making the lives of children and families better—exactly like the programs Menlo Park’s Kiwanis Club members actively support and participate in, such as scholarships for Menlo Atherton High School graduation seniors, Generations United, and Special Games.
“While providing much needed grants to organizations is gratifying, we are exploring many more ways to volunteer with Able Works, the Key Club, Special Games and other organizations in the coming year,” DeDera added. “That’s my agenda for our club in 2023!”
Donation Helps Bring Comfort And Joy To Children
Quilts for Kids received a $2500 donation from our Kiwanis Club in June 2023. This enabled the non-profit group to purchase batting and thread to create many more quilts for deserving children.
Quilts for Kids is a nonprofit organization dedicated to transforming fabrics into patchwork quilts to comfort children facing serious illness, trauma, abuse, and natural disasters. Bonnie Stearns, a quilter from the group seated at the end of the table, explained the organization’s purpose and how it works to our members so we could make an informed decision about our support for Quilts for Kids. Nate Hills’ wife Sharon is shown holding one of the quilts some lucky child will receive.
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