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- EIN 20-4307363
- PO Box 244 Novato CA 94948 USA
- http://www.respectingourelders.org
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Nonprofit Overview
Causes: Food, Food Programs
Mission: The group was formed in July, 2005 by a couple of concerned residents of the subsidized housing development at the Villas at Hamilton in Novato, Ruth Schwartz and Curt Kinkead, who became aware that some of their neighbors weren’t getting enough to eat and decided to do something about it. In starting the food program, their goal was to reduce the amount of money a participating resident in the Villas at Hamilton would have to pay per month for food to less than $100 (with the neediest paying almost nothing). The goal was achieved over a year ago, with help from Trader Joe’s, Starbucks, Safeway, Peet’s Coffee and Tea and Veritable Vegetable, an organic produce wholesaler in San Francisco. It was only in retrospect that we realized that we had eliminated poverty as well. The surplus is now feeding senior citizens at 14 other subsidized complexes in the County, and several of them are poverty-free as well.
Programs: The program produces results like no other aid program before it. It targets individual needs and assures that the neediest get the most. Above all, Respecting Our Elders is building community by forcing complexes to come together as communities to deal with the incoming food, and it is these unfettered communities that do the distribution, making a profound difference in the lives of entire complexes of the most underserved needy in our society today. On a weekly basis, we are distributing food to 15 different subsidized housing complexes, improving the lives of over 1300 seniors in Marin. In addition, each week we have two open food days, and we bring food to the Bolinas Community Center Food Program and the Canal Alliance,with bread & flowers going to the Novato Human Needs Center, St. Andrews Church and Women Helping All People, both in Marin City. Through the later organization we are serving approximately 20 pre-school age very low-income children, providing much needed additional food for both breakfast and lunch. Lastly, we operate as an all-volunteer nonprofit, with no paid staff, and with our only expenses being gas, repairs, and insurance for our van, maintaining our website, and some minimal printing and other administrative expenses, mostly around our fundraising efforts.