Dear Friend,

This has been a very busy week at FID! I want to share three things that happened, all of which relate to our motto of "doing together what we cannot do alone."

On Monday, we held our annual Golfing for Good tournament at Brookside Golf Club. It was a beautiful day, we had a full field of golfers, and we raised over $135,000! A huge thank you to our tournament chair, Pat Wickhem, for his energy, enthusiasm, and hard work to make this tournament such a success. And a huge shoutout to our staff, particularly Elyse Reed, our Development Manager for Events and Advancement Services, for planning and executing such a wonderful event. We are so grateful to all of the golfers and sponsors–doing together what we cannot do alone!

As we all know, the cuts to SNAP benefits have triggered a great amount of fear and anxiety for the nearly 17,000 Pasadena residents who depend on these monthly allotments to feed themselves, their children, and their families. We put out a call for help with food, and you answered in staggering numbers! The donations were nonstop, with several delivery trucks showing up each day, filled with packages just for FID. We cannot thank everyone enough for your generosity, both with food and monetary donations–doing together what we cannot do alone!

Finally, The Women’s Room had a field trip this week, the first in many years. They visited the Huntington Gardens and Library for a day of strolling the beautiful grounds, reflecting in wonderful journals that our Occupational Therapy intern Alex made, and enjoying bento box lunches, the sunshine, and each other’s company. Seeing the faces of the ladies, most of whom had never been to the grounds, as they relaxed, appreciating the beauty and stillness, reminds us of why we do what we do. Thanks to our Director of TWR, Lindsey Reed, and her staff, for making such a beautiful day possible. We hope it is the first of many field trips in the months to come–doing together what we cannot do alone!

All of this happened while we were also helping people with rental assistance, doing street outreach and helping folks find temporary or permanent housing, and serving a record number of households in the Food Pantry (848!). So, thank you for helping us help so many of our most vulnerable neighbors–doing together what we cannot do alone!

And finally, this week we welcomed our new Director of Street Outreach and Housing, Giulianna Lomaglio. Giulianna has over two decades of management experience in the nonprofit and homelessness sectors and is joining us from her last position as a Housing Location Manager with LAHSA. We are thrilled she is a part of the team!

Blessings and have a lovely weekend,

Rabbi Joshua

P.S. Oh, and the Dodgers won the World Series, too!

We can only operate with your help!

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At Friends In Deed, we honor the dignity and privacy of every person we serve. The stories we share are real, but sometimes, we change names or minor details or use stock photos to protect our clients’ identities. Thanks for your compassion, understanding, and support.

Friends In Deed is committed to fostering, cultivating, and preserving a culture of diversity, equity and inclusion. We embrace and celebrate the spectrum of our employees’, volunteers’, and clients’ ages, color, ability or disability, ethnicity, family or marital status, gender identity or expression, language, national origin, physical and mental ability, political affiliation, race, religion, sexual orientation, socio-economic status, veteran status, neurodiversity, and other characteristics that make our employees, volunteers, and clients unique.