My Nonprofit Reviews

As chair of International Service for the Rotary club of Palo Alto, I have arranged for our club to do several projects with Proyecto Itzaes (PI), including hands-on visits to the villages it serves. It is doing a marvelous job of giving the young Maya children of those villages the opportunity and skills to rise above their traditional occupations o fishing and subsistence farming. Some of the students have gone on to university and into prestigious jobs, breaking what has been a class barrier and setting an example for others to follow.

I remember when Canopy first started, with big ideas and a tiny budget. I’ve had the privilege of working with them off and on ever since—serving as a leader in planting trees in our neighborhood, collaborating with them in persuading the school district to adopt and implement a good tree policy, loaning them my pickup, and working with a Latino mom and her kids in planting trees at an East Palo Alto school as part of a Rotary project. It is totally inspiring to see how they’ve grown and what they’ve accomplished and there are few experiences more rewarding than planting with young people and witnessing their emotional connection to nature.

More Feedback

As a young lawyer in the 60s I worked with the founder of Sempervirens in setting it up, and also helped lay out one of its popular trails. Since then it has been spectacularly successful in preserving thousands of acres of irreplaceable redwoods in the Santa Cruz Mountains, between Silicon Valley and the coast. It works creatively with a combination of gifts, purchases and conservation easements. It has also taken the lead in bring other groups together to cooperate in making large purchases.It has a played a major part in giving the Bay Area more recreational parkland than any other urban area.

More Feedback

The mission of Proyecto Itzaes (PI) is to help impoverished and neglected Maya families in the Yucatán with literacy, health, and a stronger economy. I’m very familiar with it, because as chair of International Service for the Rotary Club of Palo Alto, I have worked to have our club make several grants to PI and also traveled there three times to do hands-on work. When PI was founded, most people in the affected villages were illiterate fishermen or subsistence farmers. With our help, PI equipped an empty local library in one village with books and furniture and offered after-school classes on computer skills. The result was absolutely transforming: Children lined up every day with their book bags, and families began reading to each other. PI gave college scholarships to promising students, who returned with higher skills to teach others, following the motto of “Learning in order to Teach.” PI has since extended its program to five other villages, expanded its offerings to include subjects such as nutrition (to avoid Diabetes) and organic agriculture, and set up a successful farmers market. It would be hard to imagine a program with greater positive impact on people’s lives.

More Feedback

Our club has done a least a half dozen projects with TWP, involving reforestation and/or providing fuel-efficient stoves in several Central American countries. Some of our members, including myself, have also visited project, done some work, and seen for ourselves the enormously beneficial impact of TWP's work, in reducing deforestation and eliminating the respiratory and burn problems caused by cooking over open fires. I would give them the absolutely highest rating.

More Feedback