2012 Cesar Chavez Health Fair

Tomorrow is our annual Cesar Chavez Health Fair. It will be amazing, so come on down and join us!

Meadow View Elementary School

2665 Dutton Meadow Ave, Santa Rosa, CA. 95407

Saturday, March 31, 2012 from 10am - 2pm

The day will be filled with entertainment, games and activities for the whole family, free food, and many services offered to the community free of charge. These services include:

• Free Dental Screenings for Children
• Blood Pressure Checks
• Blood Sugar Checks
• Cholesterol Screenings
• HIV Testing
• Personal Health Records
• Body Mass Index Screenings and Referrals
• Opportunities to ask Doctor's your Health Questions
• Over 5,000 pounds of free food donated by the Redwood Food Bank
• Free Healthy Snacks
• Free Hair Cuts 
• Over 60 organizations with information about services in the area
• Bike Rodeo for kids, including safety checks and helmets

An Important Lesson on Service and Success from Cesar Chavez

Art by Kathleen Chosa

We cannot seek achievement for ourselves and forget about progress and prosperity for our community... Our ambitions must be broad enough to include the aspirations and needs of others, for their sakes and for our own. - Cesar Chavez




 Cesar Chavez was, among many things, an advocate for serving the needs of the whole community. After years of fighting personal injustice, Chavez made the resolute decision to represent those who needed representation. He chose to spend his life peacefully but fervently leading and serving those who had great needs.

Did you know that in his lifetime, Chavez never made more than $5,000 a year? (Good thing Chavez never defined success in financial terms!) He boldly declared in his actions that success meant making the world a better place – it didn’t mean financial prestige.

Chavez’s greatest achievement was his ability to lead a generation to passionately stand up to better their community. He couldn’t have achieved this without a great deal of personal sacrifice. He was blessed with talent, passion, and a deep sense of what’s right. Instead of using his gifts to get himself out of the poverty he knew, he used his gifts to lift others out of poverty. He sacrificed his time, his talents, and his aspirations to a greater good: the welfare of his community.

Who better to inspire us than a hero who gave years of his life to serve others? Do you aspire to his selflessness and his ability to encourage and strengthen his community? Everything we do in CalSERVES is aimed at just that: serving our community with the time, talent, and dedication of our staff, AmeriCorps members, and volunteers. Cesar Chavez’s legacy has taught us the important lesson that our actions can make all the difference in the well-being of our community.

Having oranges at the Cesar Chavez Health Fair

 If you are inspired by Chavez’s legacy, come give some of your time with us to celebrate on this Cesar Chavez Day. On March 31, we’ll be providing healthy food, entertainment, and medical/dental screenings to the community from 10 am – 2 pm at Meadow View Elementary School as a part of our Cesar Chavez Health Fair. If you are interested in volunteering, contact CalSERVES Volunteer Infrastructure Project Fellow Patrick Link at (707) 225-7458.

by Lauren Serpa, CalSERVES VIP Project Coordinator

Amazing Gardens at Meadow View

Earlier this month, Meadow View mentors, families, teachers and a professional landscaper dedicated their Saturday morning to build six new wooden garden boxes as part of a major plan to renovate and beautify the school garden. The day was a success-we were able to build all six boxes from scratch in three hours thanks to the help of several dedicated families and mentors. We also completed a substantial amount of weeding in the area that will be set aside for our habitat garden.

This year has seen several successes with the garden, beginning with a total of $1500 awarded to our gardening program thanks to Suburu and the City of Santa Rosa. Not only do we finally have the funds to be able to make this project a reality, we have had amazing support from families and mentors who have donated their Saturdays to make the garden a wonderful place of learning for students.

Currently, students will be focusing on making plans for the garden and planting seeds indoors to be ready for spring planting. Future projects include planting a habitat garden featuring flowers and shrubs that attract a host of insects and animals so that students can learn about garden ecology. In addition, we will be constructing an ADA-approved bed.

We are truly lucky at Meadow View to have such a wonderful community to support our vision for an integrative and inclusive gardening program in the after-school program!

by Holly Cumbie, VIP Fellow at Meadow View Elementary

Rewards of being a Tutor

It is without a doubt difficult to pick one time that tutoring has been rewarding. Almost everyday with each bit of growth you see in your students you feel a sense of accomplishment for your student and yourself. I think the overall comprehensive change I've seen since day one in every single one of my students has been the most rewarding thing of my life.

My third grade tutee, Michelle, has been a great example of this. Michelle began with me reading at a first grade level with little to no writing and grammar skills. Her reading has improved tremendously and she is now nearing grade level expectations. She can read short chapter books not to mention use basic comprehension skills with her reading. Michelle's knowledge of the English language has seen incredible growth as well. When presented with grammar challenges she is able to identify nouns, verbs, direct objects, indirect objects, parenthetical phrases, sentence types, etc.

Michelle has been such a blessing to have in tutoring everyday. Her quiet and unsure nature can be challenging at times, but I continually see her rise to the occasion. I have no doubt by the end of this year she will be reading at her grade level, if not higher than her grade level. I know her writing will continue to improve with time as well. Seeing Michelle as well as my other tutee's skills grow has been such a blessing, and I will always remember this time of my life fondly.

by Julianna Curtin, AmeriCorps Tutoring Specialist at Meadow View Elementary

CalSERVES CANstruction!

CalSERVES participated in the annual "CANstruction: Make Food into Art Contest" held at Coddingtown Mall in Santa Rosa, CA. Over 10,000 cans of food were used in making this year's displays, and all of the canned items will be donated to the Redwood Empire Food Bank to feed over 78,000 people!

The display is currently up at Coddingtown Mall, and the People's Choice awards are still open for votes through Saturday,  March 17th. Come on down and vote for your favorites... especially if it's the CalSERVES display!

Thanks to all the amazing folks who made this year's fabulous art!