Photo Michael Hobson/Special To The Town CrierChildren prepare and serve nutritious snacks for the Sunday Friends community as they learn the value of healthful eating.

Now in its ninth year, the Town Crier Holiday Fund collects and disburses donations to assist local non-profit organizations that help fill the gap for those in need in the community. This year, the donations will be distributed to 18 organizations – an increase of 10 agencies since the fund was established.

The fund is anchored by a group of matching donors, including the Los Altos-based David and Lucile Packard Foundation. The foundation has committed $20,000 annually to the fund over the next four years.

The Holiday Fund has assisted the three groups profiled below since its inception in 2000. The groups are dedicated to giving individuals, families and students that legup that can make all the difference.

Sunday Friends

In 1997, Janis Baron was a mom with three children beginning their high school years, caught up in the comfortable culture of Los Gatos. She wanted them to see another side of life. To that end, she took her children to a homeless shelter in San Jose one Sunday. They were immediately daunted by the number of families with children who had nothing to do but sit or wander aimlessly through the facility.

With trash littering the shelter’s grounds, Baron offered some resident children a sticker for every 10 items of trash they picked up. Their enthusiastic response was an eye-opener for Baron.

“They wanted to do something that was real,” she said of the children who began calculating how many stickers they had earned.

It gave Baron and her own children an idea. Her son printed tickets on the computer and Baron purchased crayons, balls and books – a concept that would become “a working alternative to charity.”

“It just mushroomed from there,” Baron said.

With Baron’s Sunday visits to the shelter, children earned tickets to purchase prizes by doing chores – preparing healthful foods, washing dishes or decorating the shelter during holidays. Soon, parents wanted to participate, too. But they didn’t need crayons.

“‘We need diapers – we need basic things,’ parents would say to me,” Baron said.

Now a non-profit organization, families in need come to Sunday Friends. Operating on the grounds of Lowell Elementary School in San Jose on the second and fourth Sundays of the month, families in need arrive at noon to play, work and learn to earn tickets for the items they need – and for children, the things they want.

“We see families struggling to stay in housing motivated to break the cycle of poverty,” Baron said. “It’s really building confidence that their children aren’t going to repeat that lifestyle.”

With an annual budget of $275,000, Sunday Friends has blossomed into an organization that helps people value what they earn and instills a sense of self-confidence and responsibility in all who participate.

The programs vary from month to month, with emphasis on legal counseling, language instruction and parenting skills for the grown-ups. Preparing healthful meals and writing “thank-you” letters to sponsors includes the children.

“They’re skills and confidence for long-term self-sufficiency,” Baron said. “People stay – they could get handouts, but they want to feel better about themselves.”

More importantly, Sunday Friends helps families bond.

At 11, Keily was already involved with drugs and late-night partying and was disenchanted with her family.

Keily began participating in Sunday Friends with her family and credits that experience with her turnaround in life – an experience they have missed only three Sundays in the past two years.

“It has taught me to go moving in the right direction, to not do drugs, to be much more friendly to people – and even about nutrition,” Keily wrote.

Sunday Friends gives high school students the opportunity to earn volunteer community service hours dividing the programs, An average of approximately 65 families with 160 children benefit from the six hour program, Baron said.

For more information, visit www.sundayfriends.org.

The Silicon Valley Community Foundation, based in Mountain View, is the fiscal partner and provides tax receipts to those who contribute to the Town Crier Holiday Fund. To donate, make checks payable to the Town Crier Holiday Fund and send to 138 Main St., Los Altos 94022, visit www.latcHolidayFund.org or donate directly at www.siliconvalleycf.org/giving-latc.html.