December 9, 2008

Willow Glen Foundation strikes gold

The Willow Glen Foundation held its annual fundraiser on Nov. 2 and the money raised will make a lot of dreams come true for the middle and high schools.

Cindy Jacobs and Heather Giddens made all the food for the Foundation fundraiser. Servers from Willow Glen middle and high schools helped the cooks by passing trays. Some of those helping included Tori Mahod, Shelby Talley, Gretchen Rodenberger, Jacobs, Madeline Mesa, Robyn Morton, Andy Toscano, Anni Guptill, Julian Lutze and Karley Waters.

This year the seventh annual wine tasting and auction was held in the new Willow Glen Library allowing those attending to spread out. For the past two years, it was held at the Garden Theater Building, which provided more room than the Grapevine, where it started. The library venue was perfect, allowing people to move around easily and be heard. In fact, the number of attendees has grown with the site. About 120 people attended the events held at the Grapevine, increasing to about 250 last year. This year, more than 350 attended.

The collections were also up this year, with a net of more than $35,000 compared with $30,000 last year, despite the economic crisis. That figure is nearly three times the $12,000 collected two years ago.

The Foundation supports activities for Willow Glen middle and high schools. Besides the HOSTS program, which is one-on-one mentoring with students, the foundation also helps support the schools’ robotics programs, music and performing arts, college and career counseling and special needs for core class programs such as electronic balances for chemistry, graphing calculator projectors for math and an online writing assessment tool for English.

Sponsors this year included J.M. Johnson Construction, Foley & Co., Inc., Pacific Builders/The Yaconelli Family, Willow Glen Dentistry, Paine Financial & Insurance Services, Inc., Yohanson & Yau, Bill Gould Design, C.M. Peletz Company and the Schumb Family.