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Pride 2010

Come join us at the 2010 Pride Parade on Sunday, June 27.  Enjoy the warm sunshine, colorfully extravagent parade, and energetic festivities that fill this very special day.  Don’t forget to stop by the Project Open Hand beverage booth on the corner of McCallister and Polk!

Here’s a letter that provides a great description of Pride…

Dear friends,

No matter how many Pride seasons come and go, it’s still amazing. Calendars grow thick with events, rainbow flags sprout from rooftops and windows, the film festival packs them in at the theaters. Even the downtown mall across from Horizons’ office has our colors in a street-level window. And then there’s the parade, which, whatever complaints there may be about gaps between contingents or commercialization, has few rivals – anywhere, at any time – for sheer exuberance and creativity.

Yet Pride goes beyond some whirl of events and seas of rainbow flags; it’s more than marching in a parade. Part of Pride is intensely personal – it’s about who we are and what we believe about ourselves. It’s about having overcome a million messages that we’re sinners, deviants, criminals; it’s about the families we create, and the children we raise to love rather than to hate.

Another part of Pride is – inescapably – political. Defiantly, unapologetically political. I’m sure I’m not alone in remembering my first big Pride (mine in Chicago) and being lit up by a dizzying, almost dreamlike sense of connection and community. A sense of movement, even power. In a world where equality remains elusive, simply living our lives as out, proud people makes a political statement with every breath we take.

And Pride is about more than just a day or even a week in June. Pride is donating to an LGBT organization. Pride is volunteering our time. Pride is helping an elder, a neighbor, a young person. Pride is talking – really talking – with family and friends about why full equality matters to us. Pride is about holding hands wherever we choose, or supporting an out candidate for office, or talking with our LGBT friends about why contributing to the community is so essential.

Pride is what you do every day. Every time you give, every time you put pride into action in any way, you move us all a bit closer to the day when equality no longer eludes, when acceptance replaces fear, when love between people is never cause for contempt but always and only for joy.

As ever, thank you for everything you give and do for our community, and have a wonderful Pride.

With pride and gratitude,

Roger Doughty
Executive Director
Horizons Foundation

Presenting POH Peanut Butter!!!

Did you know that your average peanut butter contains more than just peanuts? A typical jar of your favorite creamy (or chunky?) nutty butter is chock full of sugar, molasses, hydrogenated vegetable oil, salt, and mono and diglycerides… whatever that means. That’s why Project Open Hand decided to stop using the store bought butter that is full of mysterious, and not so healthy ingredients. Thanks to Dan, one of our amazing staff members, Project Open Hand currently grinds our own fresh peanut butter regularly for our wonderful clients. And it gets better! Our peanut butter is made with just one ingredient… peanuts! Just the way it should be. By doing this, not only are we producing an all-natural, preservative-free product, but we have also reduced our annual peanut butter costs by forty percent! With these savings, we are able to produce more food for more people every year. Curious as to how this delicious and healthy treat tastes? Project Open Hand is excited to announce that their Peanut Butter will be available to the public at Whole Foods on Franklin and California Streets in San Francisco very soon. And, thanks to the generosity of Whole Foods, one-hundred percent of the proceeds will be donated back to Project Open Hand so that we can continue serving nutritious meals with love. We will announce our Peanut Butter’s premiere on the grocery store shelf as soon as possible – but start spreading the word today!

-Hannah and Ilana

CALL TO ACTION to Restore Weekend Senior Meals

In a last-minute budget cut, the Department of Aging & Adult Services has directed Project Open Hand and other senior nutrition providers to close all weekend meal sites serving low-income seniors throughout the City!

Project Open Hand has been providing hot nutritious meals and socialization for 300-500 seniors every weekend at five weekend meal sites for 12 years. Our weekend meal services are in the lowest-income neighborhoods of San Francisco, including the Tenderloin (at Curry and Downtown Senior Centers) and in the southeast section of town (at Visitacion Valley Community Center). Closing the Curry site will also stop the breakfast program for 190 seniors on weekends and holidays.

The Department’s plan calls for replacing the sit-down congregate hot lunches served on Saturdays and Sundays with substandard take-out meals distributed on Fridays, and laying off the staff who prepare, cook, distribute, and serve these meals on weekends. The Department proposed to cut $107,367 from Project Open Hand’s weekend meal service, and directed us to substitute bag lunches that don’t follow the Older Americans Act nutrition standards, instead of our “meals with love” that exceed those standards.

We know that our Senior Lunch Program is more than a meal – it is the opportunity to get out and socialize over a nutritious hot lunch with longtime friends. The program addresses the problems of isolation and depression as much as the nutritional needs of our elderly neighbors. These meal sites are essential community gathering-places for the lowest-income seniors who are struggling to live in dignity despite their poverty. Without the meal program on weekends, the sites would be closed, and seniors would be left alone in their SRO rooms eating a bag lunch.

The Board of Supervisors will consider the Department budgets this week and next, and they need to hear from voters who say they should not balance the City’s budget on the backs of our most vulnerable citizens. Please call or fax the Supervisors and tell them not to cut senior services, especially the meals served to hundreds of seniors each weekend by Project Open Hand.

Supervisor              District     Phone          Fax         Room          E Mail
ALIOTO-PIER, Michela  2          554-7752       554-7843     274   Michela.Alioto-Pier@sfgov.org
AVALOS, John              11         554-6975     554-6979     256 John.Avalos@sfgov.org
CAMPOS, David            9          554-5144       554-6255     272 David.Campos@sfgov.org
CHIU, David                 3          554-7450        554-7454    264 David.Chiu@sfgov.org
CHU, Carmen               4          554-7460         554-7432    260 Carmen.Chu@sfgov.org
DALY, Chris                 6          554-7970        554-7974     273 Chris.Daly@sfgov.org
DUFTY, Bevan             8          554-6968         554-6909     268 Bevan.Dufty@sfgov.org
ELSBERND, Sean          7         554-6516          554-6546     280 Sean.Elsbernd@sfgov.org
MAR, Eric L.               1         554-7410          554-7415      284 Eric.L.Mar@sfgov.org
MAXWELL, Sophie      10       554-7670          554-7674       279 Sophie.Maxwell@sfgov.org
MIRKARIMI, Ross        5         554-7630          554-7634       282 Ross.Mirkarimi@sfgov.org