CII relies on our amazing network of volunteers year round but Volunteer Appreciation Week gives us a special opportunity to formally thank and recognize the dedicated individuals and corporations who support CII’s work and mission. Last fiscal year (ending July 30, 2020), almost 10,000 volunteers contributed more than an astonishing 100,000 hours of service plus resources to support the children and families in our programs. Over the last 12 months of the pandemic, the needs of our families have changed and intensified significantly, and even though we had to pause our in-person volunteering efforts, CII’s team of volunteers have shown up like never before:

Volunteer Groups

As our classrooms and after-school programs pivoted to distance learning overnight last March, our volunteer groups didn’t skip a beat. The Junior League of Los Angeles made their seasonal activities Zoom-friendly and guided children and their families through fun activities from the comfort and safety of their homes. Together, they baked pumpkin pies at Thanksgiving, made gooey Christmas slime, decorated cookies for Valentine’s Day, and read together during the Thrive Through Literacy event. Each virtual gathering featured a fun, educational element like playing a game or reading a story aloud. UCLA School of Dentistry’s American Student Dental Association: Pediatric and Teenage Outreach Committee gave a series of remote oral health presentations to our families in both English and Spanish. L.A. Works’ R.S.V.P volunteers made Cesar Chavez’s legacy come to life for CII children by creating coloring booklets to document history through art and crafts. And, as part of our collaboration with Downey Federal Credit Union, their staff hosted 11 virtual workshops on financial literacy for families and also donated food to families in crisis.

Individuals

As nimble as we were in transitioning to virtual services, hundreds of our individual volunteers also flexed their time and resources. Thanks to a generous grant from The Carl & Roberta Deutsch Foundation, we were thrilled to honor one of our extraordinary parent volunteers, Maria Orellana, with the HALO Award. See the video here.

Through our partnership with the 2020 Census campaign, twenty-three community volunteers including stand-outs Sherika Simms and Blanca Gonzales donated more than 7,600 hours to engage and educate community members on the importance of completing the Census. They led efforts around phone banking, door-to-door canvassing and virtual workshops, participated in community events, and were instrumental in strengthening our ties in the community. The wonderful DiNapoli family provided reading segments on YouTube for our virtual Winter Festival, and also donated $1,500 in toys and books to the event. Shangrila Rendon completed a jaw-dropping 23 Ironman-distance triathlons in 34 days and set a new World Record while raising funds for CII and donating running shoes to kids in our programs. There were several other examples of generosity at the holidays with our staff rallying their networks to donate their stimulus checks, as well as more toys and books for Winter Festival. Singer/songwriter Billie Eilish donated generously to Winter Festival as well.

Support and Fundraising Groups

We are always profoundly grateful to the volunteers in CII’s three fundraising support groups and this year was no exception. The Colleagues donated funds to purchase toys and games given out to families at Winter Festival. They are also sponsoring 90 dorm kits for our Individualized Transition Skills Program (ITSP) high school graduates to take to college; these will be handed out at their Dream BIG Graduation on June 10. C.H.I.P.S (Colleagues Helpers in Philanthropic Service) are providing 500 care packages to CII CalWORKs, ITSP, Innovations, Head Start and Project Fatherhood participants at our CII WORKS event in May. And Les Amies adopted our Incredible Years Parent Group, an interactive, virtual group focused on parenting skills and parent-child relationships that meets over 20 weeks. They create toy care packages to distribute to the children enrolled.

The UCLA Latino Alumni Association and a collaborative of Filmcraft L.A., Film Tools, Filmcraft Studio Gear, Production Gear Rentals, Quixote Studios, Illuminar, and Women In Media held toy drives bringing $1,000 and $3,700 worth of toys respectively to CII children and broad smiles to their faces. Loyola Marymount University donated $2,000 in in-kind goods such as diapers, strollers, newborn hygiene kits, toys and other essential items to help a baby thrive. The Onward Scholars Program of St. Pius X-St. Matthias Academy’s middle schoolers raised funds to assemble 20 care boxes for our families. Each box included a blanket, socks, headsets, a reading book, a coloring book and box of colored pencils, and face masks.

Board of Trustees

CII’s 25-member volunteer Board of Trustees is our guiding and governing body. The time they volunteer to provide oversight of our mission and work is invaluable and we owe each of them an enormous debt of gratitude for their varied and selfless contributions. This year, we especially recognize two members – Bridget Gless Keller and Lisa Baker Morgan. Bridget chairs our Watts Building Committee, which oversees every aspect of our new Building on Success campus, slated to open this fall. Lisa Baker Morgan, a Cordon-Bleu trained chef and author, is hosting a series of virtual cooking classes to raise funds for CII. Back for an encore after her successful October debut, Dinner in Paris showcases seasonal recipes and welcomes attendees into Lisa’s beautiful home kitchen as she guides them in making a delicious meal with her trademark humor and fun. To date, the classes have raised over $40,000.

On behalf of the CII staff and all our children and families, thank you so much to our amazing volunteers! We couldn’t do it without you.

We are delighted to announce that our $25.8 million Building on Success capital campaign closed early this month, nine years after it began. Raise a glass to all those involved in this massive, multi-year endeavor! We are deeply grateful to CII’s Board of Trustees, private individuals, foundations, and our beloved CII support groups who all contributed to the campaign:

Susan C. and Stephen E. Adamson The Ahmanson Foundation Raúl Alvarado Annenberg Foundation Ballmer Group Catherine and Robert Beyer Blossom Trustman Living Trust The C.H.I.P.S. California Community Foundation The Capital Group Companies Charitable Foundation Carolina Herrera Adam and Allison Checchi Gabriel and Christine Chiu The Colleagues Mary Collins The Carl & Roberta Deutsch Foundation Chuck and Lauren Diamond The Eisner Foundation Hugh Evans The Fletcher Jones Foundation Stephanie Fox The Fran & Ray Stark Foundation Tom Gores The Gores Foundation Ahmad and Haleh Gramian The Harold McAlister Charitable Foundation

Marcia Wilson Hobbs Daryn McDonald Horton Johnny Carson Foundation Justin Dart Family Foundation Sally and Paul R. Kanin W. M. Keck Foundation Bridget Gless Keller and Paul Keller K. John Lee Leonetti O’Connell Family Foundation Les Amies Los Angeles Galaxy Foundation Mari and Patrick McAlister Meredith Corporations The Chris and Dick Newman Family The Otis Booth Foundation Steven H. Pokress The Ralph M. Parsons Foundation David and Barbara Rognlien The Rose Hills Foundation Todd and Jacqueline Rosen S. Mark Taper Foundation Marna and Rockwell Schnabel Judith K. Sherven and James Sniechowski SoCal Office Technologies Suzanne Marx and Dr. Gary Tearston Barbara Hale Thornhill Kathleen M. Vanderziel Weingart Foundation

Donations above reflect gifts of $2,500+.

It’s hard to believe it’s been a year since COVID-19 was declared a pandemic and our staff transitioned to working from home and providing so many services remotely. Our lives are forever changed by what we have experienced, and our hearts are with those who have suffered and experienced loss this past year.

Throughout it all, we have come together as an agency in remarkable ways and prioritized serving our families above all else.

Between mid-March 2020 and mid-March 2021:

We distributed a tremendous amount of PPE to keep ourselves and CII families safe:

• 18,440 face masks
• 47,184 ounces of hand sanitizer
• 192,600 individual disinfecting wipes
• 58,900 rubber gloves
• 5,110 face shields

• Our dedicated Mailroom Coordinator Oscar Tirado-Serrano put 12,000 miles on his CII van, delivering equipment and essential supplies to staff, clients and partners.
• On the flip side, as a group we drove about 1.1 million fewer miles for work than we did a year ago, reducing emissions significantly.
• Our 300 teachers, substitute teachers and home visitors, along with a large group of in-classroom parent volunteers, transformed CII preschools serving 2,200 children across nearly 30 locations to virtual classrooms overnight as Los Angeles shut down in March. We then transitioned back to safely re-open 13  preschool classrooms, thoroughly training staff on the new safety protocols. Next month, we’ll open seven more preschool classrooms, four toddler classrooms and one infant classroom.

• We distributed more than $1.7 million in assistance and supplies to CII families, which included gift cards for food, rent assistance, and in-kind donations of diapers, formula and clothing.

• We were awarded 57  grants totaling $22.15 million, including $1.4 million in COVID-19 relief.
• We raised $511,220 at three virtual fundraising events, with 473  households attending.

• We achieved our $25.8 million capital campaign goal for our new campus in Watts!

The new Watts campus grew from this

to this

• While many companies were forced to pause on recruiting or downsize, we hired 264 staff members.
• We gathered for 11  Virtual Town Hall staff meetings.
• 10,518 attendees participated in 293 trainings held during the pandemic, all but 5 of which were virtual. This includes teacher and Office of Equity trainings, as well as those offered to our community partners.
• And finally… collectively, we spent 4,245,869 minutes on Zoom! And these were just the Zoom meetings initiated on CII accounts. Imagine how many more minutes we spent on Zoom meetings initiated by outside groups, not to mention on MS Teams meetings!

With mass vaccine distribution underway and COVID-19 cases subsiding, there’s a light at the end of this very dark tunnel. We have a lot of work to do but are hopeful that this next year will be brighter. Remember to stay the course and continue to follow COVID-19 safety guidelines.

Several staff members who were vaccinated shared their experiences with the rest of us at our February Virtual Town Hall. This special meeting focused on the vaccine – we wanted to answer staff questions and clear up confusion and misconceptions. First, we showed this video produced by Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health explaining how the vaccine works. Then two doctors from Cedars-Sinai answered staff questions: Dr. Karen Youmbi, Associate Director of the Outpatient Pharmacies, and Dr. Rachel Zabner, who is board-certified in infectious diseases.

       

This Q&A was yet another example of our multi-faceted partnership with Cedars. Cedars has given CII nearly half a million dollars over the last four years, funding everything from mental health services, groceries and Family Flex Funds for parents of children enrolled in our programs to training for CII’s Early Childhood Education staff, Salesforce implementation, our web-based care coordination system, and our Office of Equity. We all learned a lot, and we hope to host something similar for CII families soon.

Minnie Barton was the first woman probation officer in Los Angeles and a fierce advocate of women and children in need. In 1906, she founded Children’s Institute – then called The Big Sister League.

Having moved to LA with her husband in 1905, she was struck by the obstacles facing indigent women who were getting left behind as the city grew. She started volunteering with LAPD, eventually becoming Chief Woman Probation and Parole Officer. She helped women who were discharged from jail to find work, sometimes keeping them in her own home until they had made other arrangements. She appealed to City Council to help; when denied, she founded The Big Sister League, expanding to help women who had come to the city looking for opportunity and had run out of money.

Ultimately, she also operated two homes, the Minnie Barton Home, a halfway in West Adams and the Bide-A-Sweet Home in Boyle Heights for unmarried pregnant women. Later in her life, she established a Valley camp for older women on her private property in what is now Sunland.

Minnie was highly sought-after as a speaker to women’s clubs and community groups. She had three sons of her own and died in 1946. The Big Sister League was renamed Children’s Institute when it moved to New Hampshire Ave in 1980.

A plaque in the Fern Dell picnic area in Griffith Park commemorates Minnie’s life of service. Read more about CII’s remarkable founder here and here.

On February 22, chef, author and CII Trustee Lisa Baker Morgan launched our three-part 2021 Dinner in Paris cooking series, back for an encore after her successful October class. Chef Lisa guided nearly 100 participants through making a delicious cheese soufflé and winter greens citrus salad, teaching culinary tips and tricks along the way with her trademark humor and fun. She put the virtual attendees at ease in creating this potentially intimidating dish and even busted the myth that stomping by your oven deflates your soufflé.

Amelia Ceja and Ceja Vineyards provided Chardonnay and Pinot Noir to complement the meal, and one lucky participant received a MacKenzie-Childs 3-qt. sauté pan generously donated by our event sponsor, Neiman Marcus.

The February class raised $23,000 for CII’s programs. Our next two classes are Monday, April 19 (fish and spring vegetables) and Monday, May 17 (refreshing summer favorites). Both are held 5:00-6:30pm PST via Zoom. Sign up here.

Many thanks to Chef Lisa for generously hosting these classes and to our event sponsors: Sommelier level – Dr. Jennifer Linehan Kutrieh and Tarek Kutrieh, Neiman Marcus; and Friend of CII level – The Kallick Family, Katie and Rick Lewis, Carey and Tim Romer, Martine Singer.

Guadalupe Diaz, Employment Specialist, started at Children’s Institute in June to work with individuals and parents in Watts seeking employment support. While the economic crisis from COVID-19 has hit communities across Los Angeles, it has especially impacted Black and Latino families in South LA. Diaz supports residents who are currently unemployed or want help moving into a more sustainable career. While new to CII, Diaz is a Watts native with experience supporting populations with employment needs.

What are your focus areas when working with clients?

It really depends on the individual as everyone is at a different place in his/her career. Broadly, I help with resume writing, practicing mock interviews and educating job seekers on certifications that may make them stronger candidates. For those with criminally involved backgrounds, I let them know their rights when it comes to hiring.

My main focus is to build self-confidence so candidates believe in themselves. This is a big part of the hiring process and it’s important that they see themselves as hirable and qualified.

Why do you think this work is important?

I think sometimes people get overwhelmed with the employment process. People need somebody to give them encouragement and help finding job openings. It’s not about doing it all for them, but having someone guide the process increases the chances of landing a job.

I also grew up in Watts and believe this is a very special community. In the past, there have been agencies or companies that make promises, but don’t deliver. I want my role to be about following through since CII has the ability to hire. Watts has so much to offer and there are so many amazing people.

What it is about your background that makes you well-suited for this role?

I started as an advocate in sexual assault and moved over to working with domestic violence victims. I then worked with formerly incarcerated individuals who mostly lived in Watts to help them transition back into the community, which included employment support.

The process of finding employment for individuals or parents who are trying to get back into the workforce is similar to working with formerly incarcerated individuals. There are certain tricks and tools that can make a major difference, which is very valuable to people in our communities.

What are the central responsibilities of your role?

I have two projects at CII – the first is working with parents in our Community Schools, which is an initiative where CII supports an entire school or preschool community with services for students, their families, teachers and administrators. I am connected with three schools in Watts where I will be helping parents find employment.

The second project is working to identify local hires for our new Frank Gehry-designed Watts Campus. The site is currently under construction, which means our contractors are hiring for a number of positions like electricians or plumbers. The campus will be part of the community when it is completed so it is important that people from the community be part of its construction. To date, we have hired six individuals from the community to work on the project, and we’re hoping to see that number grow.

What does the process look like?

I meet with candidates to understand what they want when it comes to employment. When I have a good feel for where they want to be and what skills they’ll need to get there, I reach out to potential employers on their behalf. I have existing partnerships with a number of employers so I have access to a network that wouldn’t normally be available to them. If a parent comes to me and says they want to work in a tire shop, I know a number of tire shops owners in the area and understand what they are usually looking for in candidates.

As I mentioned, I then prepare them for applying and a potential interview. This includes making sure they have professional clothes for an interview or work boots if they get hired for the Watts Campus construction.

And once they find employment and get hired, I follow up with them to see how things are going. This relationship doesn’t stop once someone gets a job. We want them to succeed in that career.

How do you support someone who contacts you for employment support, but may benefit from other CII services?

I will connect them to the appropriate CII program depending on where they need assistance. If it is a father wanting support with parenting, then I will connect him with the Project Fatherhood. If a client is seeking counseling then I refer them to our counseling department. When an individual shares with me that they are in need of an essential item like diapers, we make arrangements for the client to obtain those items from one of our sites.

Are there any success stories you would like to share?

A long-time Watts resident named Raymond had been on our list of local hires. He was a strong candidate who showed great determination, persistence and consistency so he was hired as a supervisor’s assistant for our Frank Gehry-designed Watts Campus. Since working onsite for more than a month, Raymond said he is happy and grateful to have this opportunity. He has a very positive outlook and reports to work every day with an attitude of giving his best.

Melisa Morgan, Early Childhood Services Manager, has spent seven years at Children’s Institute helping to improve the quality of early education services for families living in high-poverty communities of Los Angeles. In March, the COVID-19 pandemic swept through South LA and devastated families who were already struggling financially. Morgan saw the impact firsthand and decided to mobilize friends and family to raise life-saving funds.

To date, Morgan and her network have brought in $20,500 for CII’s COVID-19 Relief Fund. The money raised has gone directly to purchasing food and other essential supplies like diapers and formula, along with rent relief for families whose household income disappeared in the spring.

“Partnership and relationships are important to me so when the pandemic started, I wanted to use those relationships to advocate for our CII families,” Morgan said.

The money came in through a combination of members at Morgan’s church, Oasis LA, and her immediate family. Oasis LA, located in Koreatown, previously supported CII by helping Morgan enroll families in CII services and send volunteer groups to clean up and beautify CII sites.

Jennifer Perkins, Community Relations Director at Oasis LA and a close friend of Morgan, said the church’s pastors, Julian and Christina Lowe, believe in CII’s mission and wanted to take an active role to support families. The church selected CII to be one of 10 organizations they supported through a fundraising campaign called Healing Los Angeles. Members at Oasis LA brought in $10,000 in the first two weeks and an additional $3,500 over the following two weeks for CII.

Melisa Morgan and Jennifer Perkins doing outreach in 2016 to enroll families in CII’s Early Childhood Education programs.

“We decided the best thing we could do is support everyone financially,” Perkins said. “There are essential organizations on the front lines trying to fill a gap exacerbated by COVID-19, and we wanted to make sure they are supported because people in the community are so dependent on these resources.”

Morgan also found success enlisting her mom, Joline Morgan. Though she lives a thousand miles away in Washington state, she was compelled to donate as she heard stories from her daughter about the unique challenges families in South LA were facing. Joline Morgan pledged to donate $1,000 to CII each month until the pandemic ended.

“I envy Melisa because I would give anything to spend my life doing what she is doing,” Joline Morgan said. “She truly cares about and wants to make a difference in the lives of children and families.”

For Melisa Morgan, she sees her efforts aligning with national conversations around social justice and equity. Reports have shown that the heaviest economic impact of the outbreak has been within Black and Latino households. A recent survey showed 52% of Black and 71% of Latino households in LA reported “serious financial problems,” compared with 37% of white households. In a recent survey of 1,000 families in CII’s early education programs, more than 40% reported a loss or employment or a reduction in hours.

“A lot of my faith is guided by justice-minded solutions so whatever I can do to help people and bring more equity, I am going to try and do” she said. “My personal values are also reflected in CII’s values so this work really makes everything come together.”

Make a donation to families impacted by COVID-19 here.