Episode 82: Live Panel of Past Guests

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Programs from our panel guests Word for Word, Simply the Basics, Children’s Book Project, LavaMaeX and San Francisco Girls Chorus

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“I feel like George has brought together the pieces of a puzzle of equity with people, your organizations are approaching it from the arts, and from hygiene and literacy, it's just, lovely to see these different nonprofits surviving in this very difficult time and doing such great work”- Risa

In this special one hour panel discussion episode our featured voices are Executive Director of Simply the Basics, Meghan Freebeck, Interim Executive Director, of the San Francisco Girls Chorus Adriana Marcial, the CEO of LavaMaeX Kris Kepler, Word for Word’s Youth Arts program coordinator Amy Prosser and the President of the Board of the Children’s Book Project Risa Schwartz

Welcome to our one-hour special show. Going into the fall we will be producing virtual live panel discussions on a monthly basis for these one hour special shows. We are bringing together both our past guests and new guests to update our community on their latest efforts to deal with the ongoing and ever changing covid-19 pandemic’s impact on their operations and survival as well as how the community can get engaged in supporting their work.

Amy Prosser, Word for Word

Amy Prosser is Word for Word's Education Coordinator. She has taught for Brooklyn Academy of Music, Symphony Space, Hamptons Shakespeare Festival, TheatreWorks, and SF’s Jewish Community High School. She was Hamptons Shakespeare Festival’s Education Director for four years and Education Assistant at Symphony Space for a year and a half. A professional actress for the past 31 years, Amy is a member of Actors' Equity and Screen Actors Guild-AFTRA. Her play, Things Reveal Themselves Passing Away premiered at Z Below in 2016, and her time traveling, multimedia adaptation of Dracula will go into production in the near (fingers crossed) future. She is a graduate of the A.C.T. Summer Training Congress, has a BA in English Literature with a minor in Russian Language from University of California, Berkeley, and earned an MFA in Acting from the National Theatre Conservatory.

Meghan Freebeck, Simply the Basics

Meghan Freebeck has a deep passion for providing people with their most basic needs and ensuring that every person feels dignified regardless of their income or housing status. In 2016, Meghan founded the national nonprofit, Simply the Basics. As the current Board President, she now leads the nation’s largest hygiene bank which has been recognized in the Washington Post, SF Chronicle, and at the World Wide Women festival. Simply the Basics has a global reach with a model soon to be replicated in 25 cities.

Meghan was most recently the Chief Executive Officer of Project Homeless Connect, a global nonprofit founded by Governor Gavin Newsom and now operating as an independent nonprofit that has been recognized by HUD as a global best practice. In her work, Meghan is most proud to lead cost-effective and community-based nonprofits that have a direct impact on the effects of homelessness on a city and create long-term pathways for reaching goals.

Meghan has been honored as a top “40 Under 40” in San Francisco for her leadership in nonprofit organizations. She has been recognized as a “Change-maker” at the United State of Women Summit in DC and is a 2015 “National Daily Point of Light” award winner. In 2017, Meghan was honored as one of the 11 Most Inspirational Women in San Francisco.

Risa Schwartz, Children’s Book Project

Risa Schwartz is the President of the Board of Directors and CEO of the Children’s Book Project, responsible for strategic planning and oversight of the project. Risa has a B.A. in English from Yale College and a J.D. from UCLA School of Law. She is an attorney licensed in California and a knowledge management consultant in the legal and medical professions, has written and illustrated two (unpublished) children’s books, and, in her spare time, is a children’s storyteller.

Kris Kepler, LavaMaeˣ

Kris Kepler, who took over from Sandoval as CEO, has guided LavaMaeˣ through our pivot from a focus on providing mobile care services to a focus on teaching others to deliver LavaMaeˣ–designed programs—while leading the team in building and executing a consulting platform during the pandemic. Kepler came to LavaMaeˣ with 20 years of user experience design expertise, and she is particularly passionate and informed about applying a user-centered mindset to developing products and services for the unhoused, as well as fostering cross-sector collaboration to solve issues affecting unhoused people and partnering with cities to galvanize action around hygiene and homelessness

Adriana Marcial, San Francisco Girls Chorus

Adriana Marcial is the Interim Executive Director at SFGC where she leads all operations in order to achieve the artistic and educational goals of the organization. Marcial first joined SFGC as Deputy Director in 2019, drawn to the organization’s focus on exemplary music education and the development and empowerment of young women.

Marcial has an extensive background in dance performance, and believes that exposure to the arts, and a meaningful investment in our young people are integral to a thriving community. Prior to SFGC, Marcial served for four years as Executive Director of Joe Goode Performance Group, a dance theater company based in San Francisco. Marcial is a member of Women of Color in the Arts and is a graduate of Northwestern University.

Word for Word

Word for Word performs short works of fiction in their entirety, preserving the author’s voice and honoring her/his intent with exciting visuals and inventive staging. Word for Word Performing Arts Company is an ensemble whose mission is to tell great stories with elegant theatricality, staging performances of classic and contemporary fiction. Founded in 1993 by Susan Harloe and JoAnne Winter, Word for Word believes in the power of the short story to provide solace, compassion, and insight into our daily lives. We bring stories from diverse cultures to our communities and develop future audiences’ love for the printed and spoken word. Word for Word, the resident theater company of Z Space (since our founding in 1993); Youth Arts, our arts education program promoting literacy and creativity in Bay Area schools; Please listen to our in-depth interview with Amy, Susan and JoAnne and to find out more about how to get engaged in supporting Word for Word and their Youth Arts Program. Enjoy the latest episode of Word for Word’s radio theatre and podcast

Please consider volunteering and donating to Word for Word

Simply the Basics

The most basic human needs are to feel safe and healthy. Simply the Basics is inspired by Abraham Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs, the philosophy that people are unable to focus on any needs higher than their current level on the following pyramid. If a person is unable to meet their needs at the very basic level (food, shelter, clothing, education, and hygiene), they will be incapable of moving up in the pyramid to reach greater goals (job security, sobriety, mental health, and self-actualization).

BASIC NEEDS HYGIENE BANK improves the health and well-being of the community and solves great operational challenges faced by nonprofit organizations. Please listen to our in-depth interview with Meghan and to find out more about Simply the Basics and how to get engaged in supporting their Hygeine Bank. Please consider volunteering and donating to Simply the Basics. In addition to in person opportunities within COVID-19 safety protocols, Simply the Basics offers Virtual, at home volunteer opportunities for individuals, families, and large corporate groups! Volunteerism includes a virtual presentation from someone on the Simply the Basics team. You can learn more about these opportunities Here:https://www.simplythebasics.org/volunteer-activity

Children’s Book Project

The Children's Book Project gives away free books for children who need them. All those who serve children and need books -- teachers, public-health workers, childcare providers, homeless shelter staff, etc. from all over the Bay Area -- are welcome to come to select an unlimited number of free books from the Children’s Book Project in San Francisco. Since it was founded in 1992, the Children’s Book Project has collected and distributed nearly 3 million free children’s books, about 140,000 each year.

Studies have shown that children who have fewer than 20 books at home perform at least three years behind in school, compared with children with more volumes. Please listen to our in-depth interview with Risa, Maureen, and Emily to find out more about the Children's Book Project and how to get engaged in supporting their work to secure and distribute free books to teachers, children, and families in the SF Bay Area / Nor Cal communities. Please consider donating books, volunteering, donating funds and other ways to contribute to the Children’s Book Project.

LavaMaeˣ

LavaMaeˣ teaches people around the world to bring mobile showers and other essential care services to the street, where our unhoused neighbors need them most. The San Francisco Bay Area–based nonprofit is changing the way the world sees and serves people experiencing homelessness: its Radical Hospitality® approach—meeting people wherever they are with extraordinary care—helps restore dignity, rekindle optimism and fuel a sense of opportunity. Recognizing that the most sustainable solutions come from the communities where the challenges exist, LavaMaeˣ accelerates local responses to homelessness with do-it-yourself online resources, in-depth training, ongoing advising and strategic partnerships.

LavaMaeˣ evolved from Lava Mae (a play on “wash me” in Spanish), which pioneered mobile shower and essential care services. In response to the massive global need for street-based services, Lava Mae became LavaMaeˣ in January 2020 and shifted its focus to training others to provide Radical Hospitality®, while keeping its finger on the pulse of the street. LavaMaeˣ ’s impact goal is to help people and organizations launch and sustain programs that serve 100,000 unhoused people around the globe by 2024. Since setting this goal in Jan 2020, LavaMaeˣ and its network have served more than 14,000 guests with showers and care services.To learn more about LavaMaeˣ, please visit lavamaex.org

San Francisco Girls Chorus

Established in 1978, the mission of the San Francisco Girls Chorus is to create outstanding performances featuring the unique and compelling sound of young women’s voices through an exemplary program committed to education and visionary leadership in the development of this art form.

Under the direction of Artistic Director Valérie Sainte-Agathe, the San Francisco Girls Chorus has achieved an incomparable sound that underscores the unique clarity and force of impeccably trained treble voices fused with expressiveness and drama. As a result, the Chorus vibrantly performs 1,000 years of choral masterworks from plainchant to the most challenging and nuanced contemporary works created expressly for them in programs that are as intelligently designed as they are enjoyable and revelatory to experience.

Each year, hundreds of singers from 45 Bay Area cities ranging in age from 4 - 18 participate in the SFGC’s programs. The organization consists of a professional-level performance, recording, and touring ensemble and a six-level Chorus School training program. A leading voice on the Bay Area and national music scenes, the Chorus has produced award-winning concerts, recordings and tours, empowered young women in music and other fields, enhanced and expanded the field of music for treble voices and set the international standard for the highest level of performance and education. Please listen to our in-depth interview with Adriana and to find out more about how to get engaged in supporting the San Francisco Girls Chorus. Please consider donating, watch & listen, sign up for events and purchasing tickets to forthcoming ticketed performances for the San Francisco Girls Chorus

Videos

You can watch our Virtual Live Panel Discussion with our five guests from our special Covid-19's impact on nonprofits series on what they're doing now to deal with the Delta Variant & Our Pseudo Re-Opening:

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“Hygiene health is public health and just like the pandemic has been a global effort, we need to respond to so many other issues like homelessness, like income inequality, like systemic racism, like all these issues that these great organizations are solving access to arts, equitable access to arts and education and reading”

— Meghan Freebeck,CEO,Simply the Basics

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