The last Sunday in April would have marked the 22nd Glen Park Festival. But, as it probably goes without saying, this annual event has been deferred again this year due to the Covid-19 pandemic. While we must wait for another season to be together again to celebrate our neighborhood, the Glen Park Festival’s neighborhood grant program lives on, thanks to generous support from Genentech.
The program, usually funded from proceeds from the festival, benefits schools and children’s programs in and near the Glen Park community. Grantees must be either a non-profit or public school educational institution, located in or serving children from zip codes associated with Glen Park neighborhood, serving some children from low-income families (as evidenced by children receiving free/reduced lunches, scholarships, etc) and be for discreet projects, programs or capital outlays (grants to fund tuition/scholarships are not applicable).
Typically, grantees are given preference if they participate in the current year Festival, either by hosting a vendor booth, donating to the raffle, or sending representatives to be on the committee or volunteer on the day of.
This year, all grantees from prior festivals were contacted and invited to submit an application. Six grantees applied, and all six received awards, totaling $5500. While this is far below the Festival’s usual grants total, the Festival committee remains pleased to be able to support the Glen Park Community in some way at this time. 2021 recipients include:
- The James Lick Middle School PTSA will repair and purchase musical instruments for its school band program in which students from all three grades (6th, 7th, and 8th) participate, and use a portion of the funds to facilitate distance learning for the band students.
- Centro Las Olas will purchase additional art supplies for the children attending the school, in line with their mission to encourage and foster a strong foundational base of experience, play, and engagement so that children can develop strong academic skills as they grow and develop.
- The Commodore Sloat Parents’ Club Organization will dedicate the funds to ensure students have the tools they need to achieve their best results in a distance learning environment, by providing essential learning materials and technology subscriptions.
- Glenridge Cooperative Nursery School will increase the libraries in both of our classrooms to include more diverse books—not just books with issues of diversity as their central themes, but also more general picture books that feature diverse main characters. Because of reduced income due to DPH limited class sizes, Glenridge is operating at a loss, so the Glen Park Festival grant is needed more than ever this year.
- Synergy School will expand their small collection of leveled early readers, like the I Can Read series, for parents to borrow from the school library. Having a robust lending collection of leveled early readers helps them meet our goal of keeping our youngest students engaged and on track with their reading, and supports parents who are taking on a larger role in their children’s education through their “curbside pickup” program that allows kids to read physical books rather than ebooks since they spend so much time on the computer during school.
- West Portal Elementary School’s Parents Club plans to purchase diverse books for their libraries, additional instruments and watercolor paints for their music and arts programs, and a subscription for a software program that teachers will use to enhance instruction.
The Glen Park Festival all-volunteer committee is pleased to be able to support the community in this way, and looks forward to the 22nd Annual Festival to resume (hopefully) in 2022!