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When Santa Clara County’s shelter-in-place order went into effect, Valley Verde Executive Director Raul Lozano knew his San Jose nonprofit could play a role in helping families in food-insecure neighborhoods grow their own vegetables during the crisis.
The challenge was getting hundreds of garden seedlings to the people who needed them. So he turned to Shiloh Ballard, executive director of the Silicon Valley Bicycle Coalition, and asked if the nonprofit’s network of cyclists could provide contact-free delivery to families’ homes.
Ballard worried at first she wouldn’t be able to find 15 volunteers, but within a week of putting out the call, she had more than 150 — well more than she needed to deliver bags of seedlings Saturday morning to about 100 low-income families that pre-registered. “People are just wanting to do something right now,” she said. “And maybe they can’t do other things to help, but they can ride a bike.”
Each bag contains six seedlings: two tomato plants, plus one each of cucumber, zucchini, bell pepper and either padron or jalapeño pepper, along with seeds for green beans, green onions, spinach, lettuce carrots and radish. The kit includes instructions on how to care for the plants and a contact email if someone needs extra help. On Friday, Valley Verde volunteers — in masks and gloves — loaded bags into the car trunks of about 230 people who signed up to pick up their seedlings. The bike volunteers took care of delivery for those who preferred not to venture out.
Valley Verde greenhouse manager Claudia Damiani grew about 4,500 seedlings, and Valley Verde received donations from Stanford Farm, the Forge Garden at Santa Clara University and Master Gardeners of Santa Clara County. Another seedling giveaway on May 23 is planned for about 300 residents who are low-income or struggling financially because of COVID-19 and want to start a backyard garden. More information about the giveaway and Valley Verde’s other programs is available at www.valleyverde.org.
Lozano said the nonprofit lost about $175,000 in support because of grants that have been suspended during the pandemic. He’s scrambled to find new funding but is still about $80,000 short.
“We’re trying to teach people about food sovereignty, about growing their own food and being more self-sufficient,” Lozano said. “That’s what Valley Verde’s been all about from the beginning, but now that all these families are unemployed we decided to throw out a net and see how many want to do this. And families have been really happy this is here.”
CHECK IT OUT: SV@Home didn’t miss a beat in pivoting its Affordable Housing Month activities to online events. We’re about a third of the way through the calendar, which includes lunchtime draw-alongs with artists Harumo Sato and Lila Gemellos, webinars about ADUs, a Twitter chat about affordable housing and disability, Zoom trivia games and even a YIMBY bookclub discussion. It all wraps up with a May 29 webinar, “The State of Affordable Housing During the COVID-19 Pandemic.” You can get the full list of events at siliconvalleyathome.org/events/#affordable-housing-month.
SUNNYVALE STEPS UP: Sunnyvale Community Services Executive Director Marie Bernard emailed to let me know that the nonprofit agency met its $100,000 challenge grant from an anonymous donor. More than 700 Sunnyvale residents donated $164,000 — in contributions up to $250 each — and Citrix threw in an additional $10,000.
“We now have $274,000 to use for helping other Sunnyvale residents in financial distress due to the COVID-19 crisis,” Bernard wrote. “We estimate 137 families will have their monthly rent covered as a result of this wonderful effort.”
SCIENCE STAR: Kendall Robinson, a fifth-grader at Sartorette Elementary School in San Jose, has really figured out this distance learning thing — and managed to make it more engaging for others.
The 10-year-old has launched “Science with Kendall,” a weekly Google Meet session in which she conducts live experiments with Sartorette students of various grade levels — and even some teachers. Each session is recorded and emailed to school families with a list of experiment ingredients, equipment and instructions. This week, she taught participants how to make a lava lamp and how a Van de Graaff generator creates static electricity.
Sartorette Principal Debbie Stein says Kendall has been a guest at science museum special events across the country and created her own YouTube channel, Kendall the Scientist, two years ago.
START SAVING: History San Jose CEO Bill Schroh Jr. expects that the COVID-19 pandemic and Santa Clara County’s role in the response will prove to be an important part of the city’s history. And any story is best told by the people who lived it, so he’s asking Santa Clara County residents to start saving photographs, newspapers and other artifacts that illustrate how people lived during the pandemic and shelter-in-place.
There’s not a plan in place to take donations yet, but that time will come eventually. You never know how handy that TikTok dance video may be to history students 20 years from now.
PASS THE CRAYONS: If you’re a San Jose resident with both civic pride and crayons, Kirsten and Seth Reilly have just the project for you. “We Love San Jose” is a 23-page coloring book featuring city icons including: Babe the Muffler Man, the Lick Observatory, the Winchester Mystery House, Five Wounds Church, the Capitol Drive-In and even the Stephen’s Meat “Dancing Pig” sign.
Kirsten Reilly, a Realtor and broker associate with Los Gatos-based Compass, said in a blog post that they gathered ideas from San Jose residents about which landmarks should be featured and then commissioned an artist to draw them from photographs. You can download it for free and print out the pages at www.kirstenreilly.com/blog/2020/5/3/we-love-san-jose.
