WriterCoach Connection

WriterCoach Connection in the business community

In October, we joined a group of fellow nonprofit organizations at an employee outreach event sponsored by Dreyer's Ice Cream, in association with the Dreyer's parent company Nestle, U.S.A., for the corporation's Community CARE Campaign.

The event offered an opportunity present information about WCC to Dreyer's corporate employees, who are invited to donate to a selected nonprofit program a day's pay and then become eligible for a 50% match from the Nestle Foundation.

On hand to present WCC to Dreyer's employees were  WCC Oakland Site and Volunteer Coordinator Karen Larson (second from right, below) and Community Alliance for Learning board member Shelli Fried (right, below). The lunch-hour event was overcast and drippy, but enthusiasm among Dreyer's employees was sunny and bright!

Bob Menzimer

The spirit of WriterCoach Connection personified

The magic of WriterCoach Connection is in the people who go to such extraordinary lengths to make it happen. Those people include not only the 400+ community volunteers who serve as our writer coaches but also our dedicated site coordinators, who make the program happen at each school, and the generous donors who make it possible for us to do our work with teachers and students. One such site coordinator is Peg Healy, who keeps things humming at Albany Middle School, and Peg's friend Cheryl (Casey) Casebeer, who began responding to Peg's outreach to friends for WCC support some time ago from her home in the mountains away from the Bay Area and has continued ever since.

Recently, Casey heard about the dire straits of the Albany Middle School budget, and the resulting decrease in funds to support WCC in its work with AMS 8th graders. Casey got wind that the wondrous AMS PTA was pledging to help fill the budget gap by increasing its original commitment for WCC funding. In response, Casey pledged to match the additional PTA funding dollar for dollar. The PTA pledged to increase it's funding from $2,000 to $4,000, and Casey was as good as her word. In the photo below, Peg is holding a check for WCC from Casey in the amount of $2,500! Peg's cat Henry looks on in disbelief.

We'd have trouble believing such generosity ourselves, were it not for the fact that Casey has offered it so consistently in the past. And she's not alone. She and Peg are perfect examples of why WriterCoach Connection continues to grow, even in the face of a challenging economy that has brought so many worthy nonprofit programs to their knees. We're managing to stick at our existing sites and have doubled our number of new sites in the past two years. Casey, Peg, and the AMS PTA are some of the reasons why.

Bob Menzimer