What Do Foundation Boards Really Do? Vol. 1

Made it through my first meeting as Board Chair for The California Endowment this week. Yay! We had a great session with community organizers from City Heights, San Diego, and Boyle Heights, Los Angeles.  America Bracho inspired us with her story of how Latino Health Access began their program of providing free treatment for uninsured Latinos with diabetic retinopathy by trading tamales for surgery. Visited with young people in South Sac. where we learned about youth efforts to improve access to health food. Diana Ross with Mid-City CAN in San Diego described how they held over 100 home meetings in several languages to seek input in developing their Building Healthy Communities plan. Brings me back to my years at Asian Health Services providing primary care and prevention services for low-income, monoligual Asians in Oakland.

Building healthy communities in 14 California neighborhoods that suffer from the most debilitating social conditions will take time, trust, sustained investment, and processes to change social norms that build real power in the communities themselves.  I'm proud to be involved with a philanthropy and board colleagues that are fully committed to this for the next 10 years.  BTW, look for TCE to model support for technology literacy and adoption in underserved communities (if I have anything to say about it!).

AND FINALLY, tomorrow as TCE board chair I get to host First Lady Michelle Obama and fantastic community leaders as she kicks off "Let's Move" in California!!  Pics to come . . .