Home | Who We Are | Ways to Give     February 2019   
Lynn's Message

Welcome to 2019! As we enter into a new year, on behalf of the clients and staff, I thank each of you who have volunteered and supported our work at Edgewood. With your gifts, your time and your talents you helped us reach some amazing milestones last year, which include increasing from 9,200 lives touched to11,000 in one year and celebrating the 25 th  year of our groundbreaking Kinship Program.
 
Now in my second year as CEO at Edgewood, I invite you to grow with us; to invest in our work. A period of visioning and strategic planning is before us, not for the first time, nor for the last time. But right now, our future is trending in a ways that leans favorably toward training, research and evaluation, and the creation of innovative partnerships that may possibly result innovative housing solutions. I want Edgewood to strategically align with the needs of our community over the next decade. Change is upon us and I know it will be hard and rewarding. As the renowned Humanistic psychologist Abraham Maslow states, “a person reaches out to the environment in wonder and interest, and expresses whatever skills s/he/they have, to the extent that s/he/they is not crippled by fear, to the extent that s/he/they feels safe enough to dare.” Abraham Maslow , Toward a Psychology of Being , 3 rd ed. NY, Wiley, 1998)
 
Won’t you dare to grow and change with us? Invest in Edgewood’s brighter future as we reach out together in wonder and interest about the changes to come.
 
Appreciatively,
 
Lynn
Salesforce's Volunteers “Think Inside the Box” for Edgewood Youth

About 60 Salesforce employees gathered on the third floor of Salesforce Tower at a lunchtime event on Friday, January 18, 2019, to hear a presentation about Edgewood and assemble “Sensory Boxes” to support Edgewood youth participating in group therapy.

“Our kids sometimes need help to calm themselves and busy that part of their brain that has trouble settling,” said Keri Kirby, Campus Coordinator at our Vicente location. “We place a box filled with tactile items in the middle of the room during group therapy, and the kids can help themselves to fidgets and other items that help soothe and focus them, allowing them to get the most they can from therapy.”
The majority of volunteers work on Salesforce’s User Experience (UX) Team, led by Lana Herrera. “The team was super-excited to learn about Edgewood’s impact and volunteer to assemble sensory boxes to enhance the group therapy work that supports vulnerable children and families,” said Lana. “We believe in Edgewood’s work to transform the lives of young people suffering from mental illness and to strengthen Bay Area families and communities.”

The volunteers assembled 12 complete boxes, each filled with a dozen or more items (all of which were purchased by Salesforce!), and which Edgewood therapists had already begun using the following week. Edgewood staff and clients are grateful to Salesforce for making the Sensory Box project come to life and we look forward to future volunteer engagements.
The Edgewood Auxiliary Fair is coming! Our biggest annual celebration begins on Thursday, April 4 from 5:00 pm - 10:00 pm and Friday, April 5 from 10:00 am - 3:00 pm at the Bently Reserve. Shopping opportunities with exclusive vendors are also available both days. Each vendor donates 25% of their sales during the 2-day event to Edgewood.
 
The Edgewood Fair made its debut on May 3, 1967, in the Hall of Flowers in Golden Gate Park. It began as a garden festival for the Women’s Auxiliary to sell home-grown plants and handmade jams to benefit children with mental illness.
 
In addition to hosting the Edgewood Fair, the 75-member Edgewood Auxiliary volunteers throughout the year at our various locations. A huge 'thank you' to our wonderful volunteers!
Yoga and More
Teaching yoga is a way for me to give back—to be in service of something greater than myself. I have found that my own regular yoga practice helps me feel more grounded, self-aware and patient. I also feel very connected to the yoga community, which is pretty strong here in the Bay Area.
 
When Keri emailed to ask if I wanted to teach at Edgewood for the year I was so happy I cried. I read the email on MUNI and tears welled up in my eyes, it felt like a dream come true. Yoga is one of the tools I use to practice body awareness, manage stress, and to regulate my mood. All of these things can be very difficult to learn and have such a profound effect on our life experiences.
 
I consider it a great privilege to offer Edgewood what I’ve learned from a regular yoga practice and my teacher training at Love Story Yoga. For me personally, a dedicated yoga practice is one of the many resources I use to manage depression and anxiety. Yoga alone won’t fix everything, but it helps me keep things in balance so I am well and can be in service of others.
 
I’m so honored to be affiliated with the Grace Magill Fund, which promotes adolescent well-being in memory of an young person whose life was cut far too short. Depression and anxiety were a big presence in my teenage years, and it was really hard. Given that experience, it’s especially meaningful to me to be offering yoga under the Grace Magill Fund. 
 
I questioned how I could become more involved and talking to some of the passionate staff members at Edgewood when the chance to join Edgewood Auxiliary came up. So I went for it, and I’m really excited to be there and have a successful 2019 with Edgewood! 
State Senate and Assembly Honor Healthy Kin
In February, Edgewood received a renewed grant of $25,000 from the Peninsula Health Care District (PHCD)for its Healthy Kin program, which provides health care services and support to kinship caregivers in San Mateo County. Kinship families are created in the wake of trauma, when relatives such as grandparents step in to care for children whose parents are unavailable due to substance use disorder, incarceration, psychiatric hospitalization, death, etc. These caregivers are often challenged to maintain their own health due to advancing age and the job of raising often high-needs children recovering from trauma.

The goal of the program is to enable these heroic caregivers to maintain good health and acquire the skills and capacity to keep children safely in the home and out of foster care. Since 2013, the District has provided $230,000 in support to the program and transformed the lives of many kinship families in the district. As part of the award ceremony, the district presented proclamations from the California State Senate and Assembly recognizing the important role of Healthy Kin in the community. We are very grateful for our long-term relationship with PHCD. Thank you!