Partners for Peace - Highlights

‘CITY AT PEACE’ SUMMIT
A Community Commitment to Change

Partners for Peace is inviting the community to participate in their 5th annual {b-‘City at Peace’ Summit} on Saturday, March 1, 2008 at Hartnell College - Steinbeck Hall (cafeteria) from 8am – 2pm.

The ‘City of Peace’ Summit will give over 200 young student’s grades 7-12, college students, parents, grandparents, school staff/counselors, civic leaders, elected officials and the adult community at large an opportunity to participate in bilingual (English and Spanish) violence prevention workshops. Workshops will underscore the following themes, ‘saying no to drugs and gangs, dealing with peer pressure, behavioral health issues for teens, overcoming obstacles at home and at school, how to deal with bully’s, using spirituality to reclaim your family, and much more. "Our goal is to underscore that gangs, drugs and violence are not acceptable in the City of Salinas and this summit will serve as a map for our community to create a framework for violence prevention," states Claudia Pizarro, Executive Director of Partners for Peace.

This year’s 5th Annual ‘City at Peace’ Summit registration ($5.00/student and $10.00/adult) will include continental breakfast, lunch, bilingual workshops, a wall of peace, raffle prizes, child care (ages 2 and up / limited slots), live music, cultural dancers and a resource fair. Hartnell College has waived parking for the summit, therefore, attendees can park in the garage free of charge.

Register via phone to the Salinas Adult School at 831. 796.6970 and mail registration fee $5/student & $10/adult (limited scholarships for registration available) to Salinas Adult School, Health and Safety – 20 Sherwood Place, Salinas, CA 93906. Please make checks or PO’s payable to Partners for Peace. Registration deadline is on Wednesday, February 20, 2008

The ‘City at Peace’ summit has confirmed keynote speaker, Jaqueline P. Cruz and the participation of Salinas Mayor, Dennis Donohue and Assemblymember, Anna Caballero among other elected officials that are instrumental to hear and address the concerns of community members present at the summit. "It is critical to translate our concerns and vision for the City of Salinas into action," adds Pizarro.

This year, Hartnell College, Weed and Seed, Bay Federal Credit Union, Family to Family, Silver Star Resource Center, Salinas Police Department, Monterey County Health Department, 1st Capital Bank, Monterey County Probation Department, City of Salinas, Pacific Valley Bank, Salinas Adult School, Strengthening Families, Brent Eastman Insurance, Pacific Valley Bank and Salinas Valley Memorial Hospital are sponsoring the summit.

2008 City at Peace
Committee Members

Deborah Aguilar, A Time for Grieving
Sarah Aguilar, Hartnell College
Kathy Bauer, Salinas Adult School
Lisa Belnas, Partners for Peace
Carmen Gil, Community Volunteer
Pastor Frank Gomez, United Methodist Church
Commander Trevor Iida, City of Salinas
Linda McGlone, Monterey County Health Department
Julia Mena, Hartnell College
Claudia O. Pizarro, Partners for Peace
Gloria de la Rosa, Weed and Seed/City of Salinas
Rocio Vasquez, City of Salinas
Dan Villarreal, Partners for Peace
Penny Welsh, Salinas Adult School
Anne Wheelis, Monterey County of Education
Margie Wiebusch, Hartnell College

7th Annual Parent Patrol Recognition Day
Parents Placing School SAFETY First!

On Saturday, May 31st, 2008 PFP will host the 7th Annual Parent Patrol Recognition Day from 8:00 a.m. to 12:00 noon, location still to be determined. Community Outreach Worker Martha Rodriguez has been working at various Salinas elementary schools identifying, organizing and training volunteer leaders who have an interest in carrying out the objectives of the parent patrols; to keep children safe. These parent patrol volunteers direct traffic in front of their neighborhood schools and help children cross busy streets. They also encourage distracted parents to follow the traffic rules so that young children arrive to school safely.

The Parent Patrol Recognition Day is dedicated to acknowledge and support individuals who give up part of their busy day to make a difference in the lives of children. The parents volunteer an amazing 7,650 hours during a one-year period. In addition to the recognition, parents are able to participate in a Community Fair where parents have the opportunity to learn about programs and services available in the community such as medical and dental services, child care, educational opportunities, drug and alcohol counseling, diabetes and blood pressure exams.

Parents will also have the opportunity to participate in two parent education sessions on topics such as understanding the teen brain, positive discipline, anger management, motivating your children to stay in school and be a success, gang prevention, healthy eating and more. Childcare with games, coloring and workbook activities, reading, healthy eating and exercise will be provided. Over 130 parent patrol leaders and their children are expected to participate.

For more information or to display information of your agency during the Community Fair please call Lisa Belnas at (831)751-7310 ext. 10.

Free Teen Activities at the Mall

The hours immediately after school can be a dangerous time for teenagers.Teens are more likely to commit violent crimes and to be the victims of violence between 3 p.m. and 4 p.m. on school days. Fortunately, as part of the Gang Violence Prevention Team (GVPT), Partners for Peace in collaboration with Northridge Mall, Michaels, Salinas Adult School, Mo. Co. Probation Department and Mental Health Department, Postpone and other local organization are working together to bring after school activities, increasing numbers of teens using
this time to learn, meet new people, explore new interests and develop new talents and skills.

In a recent survey conducted by the GVPT, teens said they liked to hang around with friends at the mall but indicated they would love to have something more to do. 49% of teens said they are interested in drawing, 32% painting or crafting, 49% would like to learn how to dance Hip Hop, 47% wants to learn about interview skills and Finance (bank accounts/investing) and 34 would like to learn how to cook. Interesting enough, 68% said they would like to have activities between 3-7 p.m. We took an interest to engage the teens in constructive activities at the mall and organized a schedule the following after school activities:

What are you doing after school? Hang with friends, learn new things, play games and more!

Mentoring Program

Partners for Peace, as part of the Silver Star Youth Center, located at the Old Natividad Hospital, continues to provide youth ages 10 to 18 the guidance to help each teen discover how to unlock and achieve his or her potential through its Mentoring Program. The youth meet once per week in a structured environment with a group of dedicated volunteers who facilitate group activities and expose the youth to new experiences, encourage positive choices, promote high self-esteem, support academic achievement and who introduce the youth to new ideas. In January, 10 teen boys completed the Mentoring Program and volunteered to participate with the mentors in a community service project earned a yearly membership at the Boys and Girls Club.

The program goal is to assist the youth in identifying and achieving their own goals and gaining the confidence and skills necessary to reach his/her full potential. This program is designed to assist youth ages 10 to 18, who display some of the following risk factors for gang involvement: truancy issues, lack of academic success, lack of positive role models, negative peer influences, family management issues and substance abuse. Some of the objectives for the Mentoring program are to prevent gang membership and association, reduce truant behavior, assist the youth in completing academic requirements for high school diploma, GED or vocational program, and create opportunities for educational experiences.

PG&E CARE PROGRAM

This winter season families are expected to pay more to heat their homes due to low temperatures and higher energy prices. Partners for Peace, in partnership with PG&E are conducting outreach in the community to sign up eligible residents to participate in the CARE program. The CARE Program provides a 20% discount on monthly bills for qualified low or fixed income households and housing facilities. Qualifications are based on the number of people living in the home and total annual household income. Families need to reapply every two years for the discount.

The application is easy to fill out and the information provided is confidential. A family of four with total combined annual income less than or equal to $40,500 is eligible to receive the discount. A household may qualify whether they live in an apartment, house or mobile home park. The goal is to identify as many eligible families in Salinas to enroll in the CARE program. If you know of families that could benefit by enrolling or would like some applications available to distribute at your agency, please contact Lisa Belnas at (831) 751-7310 ext 10 for an application or further information.

STRENGTHENING FAMILIES PROGRAM

The Strengthening Families Program is a 7-session family skills-building curriculum designed to prevent teen substance abuse and other behavior problems, strengthen parenting skills, and build family strengths by helping families increase knowledge and skills for positive development, caring relationships, and resiliency.

Community Outreach Workers, Martha and Maria referred over 10 Spanish speaking families seeking help on how to communicate with their youth ages 10 – 14. Parents and youth meet once a week for 7 weeks for two hours. They participate in separate skill building workshops for the first hour and a supervised family workshop the second hour. The parent session focus on learn the importance of providing a nurturing environment, the need for good family communication, setting rules and rewarding good behavior as well as applying appropriate discipline. The youth sessions focus on dealing with stress and strong emotions, communication skills, setting goals, responsible behavior and improving skills to deal with peer pressure. The youth are encouraged to learn how to express themselves and to communicate their needs. Classes are offered in English and Spanish and bilingually.

Partners for Peace is offering this program thanks to a grant from SAMHSA (Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration); a federal government grant from the Department of Health and Human Services. Referrals to the program can be made by school officials, the district attorney truancy officers, probation officers or by the parents themselves. For more information call Michael at 751-7310 ext. 15.

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COMMUNITY OUTREACH

PARENT EDUCATION WORKSHOPS two times each month, over 30 parents with children in the Salinas and Alisal Elementary School District, meet at the PFP office to participate in educational workshops on various topics such as parenting skills, child brain development, the importance of reading to young children, how to manage stress and the importance of participating in the civic life of Salinas. The parents have the opportunity to learn how they can create a peaceful community. These workshops are possible thanks to a collaboration with the Salinas Adult School.

Partners For Peace
500 Lincoln Avenue, Suite A
Salinas, CA 93901
(831) 751-7310
(831) 769-0967 Fax
www.partners-for-peace.org

If you have any questions/comments or would like more information about Partners For Peace, please contact Lisa Belnas (831) 751-7310 ext. 10 or email us at c4peace@pacbell.net

SALINAS READS WEEK
A little reading goes a long way!

Salinas Reads Week – From October 20-24, 2008, hundreds of community members, business people, parents, grandparents and college students joined together with other members of the community to change the life of a child by reading for one hour in an elementary school classroom. "Success in school starts with reading" was the message of Salinas Reads Week. It combined three essential elements to inspire children's literacy: motivating children to read, encouraging family and community involvement, and creating excitement in the classroom to spark an interest in reading. "Helping a child learn to read is a gift that will last a lifetime" said Lucy Pizarro, a reader who signed up to read at Bardin school and also in her granddaughter’s class at Cesar Chavez school.

Salinas Reads Week is a simple, one week event that has a big impact. Its mission is to ensure that every child in Salinas believes in the value of books and the importance of reading. It is a celebration of the joy of reading, which seeks to motivate children to read by recruiting community members to volunteer to read their favorite story to elementary school students, and to motivate children to read and travel via books into the wonderful land of imagination and fantasy, creating a foundation for future success. When children become good readers in the early grades, they are more likely to become better learners throughout their school years and beyond.

Spending time reading aloud to children is a time to be treasured and that was the experience of more than 400 volunteers who read to more than 12,000 children in 28 Salinas elementary schools in Salinas. Volunteers were encouraged to talk about the need for good literacy skills in the workplace and to share personal challenges they may have faced learning to read.

In the 1st through 3rd grades students learn to read. By the 4th grade and beyond students read to learn. In order to learn students must be able to read.

Children who are read to develop good reading habits.

Children who read well do better in all aspects of schooling.

Special thanks to Northridge Mall, Hartnell College – The Center for Teacher Education and Baseball Team, and HSBC for the staff and students who volunteered to read. A special thanks to HSBC for their financial support as well.

Partners For Peace
500 Lincoln Avenue, Suite A
Salinas, CA 93901
(831) 751-7310
(831) 769-0967 Fax
www.partners-for-peace.org

If you have any questions/comments or would like more information about Partners For Peace, please contact Lisa Belnas at (831) 751-7310 ext. 10 or email us at c4peace@pacbell.net

YES Program!

It was a great day for the students participating in the YES program (Youth Employment Services). The Monterey County Youth Program (Office of Employment Training), one of the partners for the YES program, went to Mount Toro High School with stipend checks for the students who attend school daily. All of the YES students had the opportunity to enroll in the OET program and receive services to help them to be successful during the YES program, such as: obtaining a job during the summer, receiving a $20 per day stipend for going to school, transportation assistance and a tutor to assist with academic performance.
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The $20 per day stipend has been a great incentive for the students and has encouraged them to attend daily. Many of the students earning the stipend say they are using the money to purchase school clothes and supplies for the next school year. The students are working hard to earn
academic credits for high school graduation. Nine students will graduate with their class this summer by earning credits in the YES program.

The Y.E.S. Program is a violence prevention initiative that reaches out to high school students that are credit deficient and offers them an opportunity to earn up to 30 credits needed for high school graduation. The program also offers the students an opportunity to learn important work skills and earn money. Students from neighborhoods with multiple high risk factors for violence have the opportunity to receive tutoring, peer and adult mentoring, and a summer job. YES students have been focused and energetic throughout the summer school session and are excited to be closer to their graduation goal.

FARMWORKER WELCOME

Salinas, the County seat of Monterey, is home to thousands of farmworkers, who labor daily to plant, cultivate, irrigate and harvest the produce grown in our valley. These hardworking people earn low wages, work long hard days and are likely to be immigrants, mostly from Mexico who speak no English. A number of years ago PFP began the "Farmworker Welcome" Project in order to help farmworkers learn how to avoid becoming victims of violence. Now, the Farmworker Welcome has grown, and is designed to welcome farmworkers as the season gears up, to show appreciation for their hard work and to provide important information about services available in the community on housing, health, safety, food, nutrition and banking. In addition, services are brought to the fields such as the Clinica de Salud and Wells Fargo Bank.

This "Welcome" creates the opportunity to build bridges and a sense of community with all people who live in Salinas, regardless of ethnic background, class, race, religion or language differences.

Work on the Farmworker Welcome project continued this month with the outreach workers providing important information to farmworkers in the early morning hours, as they prepare to board the bus to begin their work day and out in the fields during the noon lunch break. Martha and Maria have distributed over 4,454 packets of information on accessing services, how to enroll at Hartnell College and the Adult School, how to open a bank account, safety tips, medical and dental services available in the community and healthy eating information.

THE CARE PROGRAM

Partners for Peace working in partnership with Pacific Gas & Electric Company has spent the winter distributing CARE applications to as many farmworkers, parent patrol leaders and low income people as possible. The CARE Program provides a 20 percent discount on monthly PG&E bills for qualified low or fixed income households and housing facilities. Qualifications are based on the number of people living in the home and the total annual household income. The program is available to single-family, low income customers who have their own accounts. Group living facilities, homeless shelters, hospices and women’s shelters may quality for the CARE discount if the facility is federally tax exempt. Non-profit or privately owned and licensed employee housing, non-profit migrant housing centers and migrant farm worker housing owned and operated by the State Office of Migrant Services may also quality.

Pacific Gas and Electric Company is sponsoring a campaign in 2006 to educate its residential customers about the CARE Program, its benefits, requirements and application procedures. PG&E is especially interested in increasing CARE enrollment among these communities that are the lowest income and most seriously under-enrolled, in addition to rural and isolated communities. These communities include African American, agricultural workers, Asian Pacific Americans, California Indians, Latinos, mobile home dwellers and senior citizens of all background.

To date, PFP staff has distributed 126 completed CARE applications. Staff go to the schools and neighborhoods to find families who need the CARE program, and they not only hand out the applications they also help people fill them out and make sure that the application gets to the appropriate personnel at PG&E.

Partners for Peace
1330 Natividad Road, Building 700 (Old Natividad Hospital)
P.O. Box 5713
Salinas, CA 93915
(831) 751-7310
(831) 769-0967 Fax
www.partners-for-peace.org

Reading for Peace -Helping Children Become Readers

Partners for Peace in collaboration with the Monterey Reads Program from the Panetta Institute sponsors the Reading for Peace project to Salinas elementary schools. The program targets students K-3rd grade that are identified by their teacher as reading below grade level. The student is assigned a reading volunteer who reads to the child on a one to one basis. Currently, there are 10 volunteers reading to 58 students; 18 students at Natividad School, 32 at Roosevelt School, and 8 at Sanchez School. Reading volunteers take reading to the students seriously. Carolina Martinez, one of the volunteers reads to 12 to 14 students at Roosevelt School, Monday through Friday from 8-11:30 a.m. She is very enthusiastic about reading to the children and has noticed the improvement in their reading skills Community Outreach Worker, Martha Rodriguez is also part of the Reading for Peace project, reading to a child two times a week. In addition, she is tutoring Leonardo Villa, a fifth grade student at Los Padres whose mother asked Martha for help in reading and math. For the past three months, Martha has met with Leonardo twice a week and he has shown great improvement in reading in English and math. His mother, Maria Villa is learning how she can help her child academically by taking child development classes for children with disabilities at Hartnell College. She has learned how to be an advocate for her son.

footnote link | Spanish site