 You're tuned in to the COVID-19 Community Report here on KDRT-LP 95.7 FM in Davis, California. I'm Audemars-Labe Renaud and today is Tuesday, October 13th, 2020, and we're sharing local news and resources focusing on what's impacting Davis and nearby cities in Yolo County during the COVID-19 pandemic. My guests today are Heather Saluter of Yolo Crisis Nursery and Evie Wright of Suroptimus International of Davis and we'll get to those interviews in just a few minutes. Yolo County spent its first week in the state's less restrictive red tier under which a slew of businesses were able to reopen with modifications. The state developed a tiered structure to simplify the framework and lay out clear disease transmission goals for counties to work towards. Progression through each tier brings increasingly less restriction, but public health experts expect that we are still a long way from a return to what we're now calling normal times. The big news in COVID protocol this week was that the state updated its gathering guidance and this is for private gatherings only. Please take note. There are seven main points to the new guidance. The first is that attendance is limited to three households and they should be consistent over time. In other words, it's okay to gather consistently with other households, but they should be the same households all the time. So unfortunately, this is not encouragement to be scheduling get-togethers with every household in your address book. Two, the gathering should take place outdoors. Period. There are no guidelines yet for gathering indoors. Three, don't attend any gatherings if you're sick, high risk, or have concerns that you may have been exposed to the virus. Four, continue social distancing, working to maintain six feet in between yourself and others, and practice good hand hygiene. Five, wear a face covering. Six, gather for two hours or less. And seven, singing, chanting, and shouting are strongly discouraged and the state guidelines actually say that if you must sing, chant, or shout that you do so softly. So this advice marks the first move towards approving gatherings of any kind. So even with all the caveats, it's pretty significant. Also a reminder that testing sites continue to be available throughout the county this month with sites in Davis, Knights Landing, West Sacramento, and Woodland. These locations test for the coronavirus, not its antibodies, and the tests are free, though if you do have insurance, they'll find a way to bill it. Proof of county residency is required, and a driver's license or a bill with your name and address on it will suffice. Each site may have specific requirements for booking appointments, and you can find out more about all of that by visiting yolocounty.org and clicking on the COVID-19 testing page. And my near weekly reminder at this point, yolocounty.org, spotlights on the front page, all the COVID public health orders, all the information about testing and new rules and everything you need to know. Okay, and I want to take a moment to steer voters towards our voter education resources here at Davis Media Access and K-Dirt. Working with our studio manager, Diane Dodoshka, I interviewed 24 candidates for local offices spanning school board to Congress, plus the pro-con campaigns for local ballot measure B. Each candidate or campaign joined us for a five-minute interview, and we did our best to provide the same experience for all while using a somewhat challenging remote platform. All the statements are up at davismedia.org slash election. And I'll wrap by saying that DMA plays an important role in our local election information ecosystem, and this work is made possible by your community support. You can learn more about that at davismedia.org. Now we're going to take a moment for music, and I'll be back with the first interview shortly. All right, I am bopping in my seat here to the Rosenberg Trio with Gypsy Swing, and I want to thank my pal Don Shore for helping out with the music selections and a lot of other stuff every week. Thank you, sir. All right, the Yolo Crisis Nursery offers voluntary and free nurturing childcare for ages birth through five years, 24 hours per day, 365 days per year. Equally important are the crisis nurseries wraparound services that help parents resolve the problems that brought them to their door in the first place. And here to tell us more about that as well as how COVID-19 has impacted them is their Executive Director Heather Sluder. Thank you so much for joining us, Heather. Hi, thank you for having us. You bet. So I love how your website puts it right out there. Parenting is difficult. That's one of the first things you see on the website. And speaking as a mom of three myself, it's challenging under the best of circumstances. But you are there, the crisis nurseries, there to help folks who are perhaps at their lowest point for a variety of reasons. So let's start with how do you define crisis and how might someone land at your doorstep? So we do not turn anybody away. Anybody can call us with anything that's going on in their life circumstances. Crisis could be from just post-partum depression or needing mental break or having any type of doctor's appointments that don't have to someone safe to watch the child, to extreme domestic violence, to homelessness, drug addiction, drug abuse. So the measure of crisis, it could be anything. And again, anyone can call us for even care packages if they need food security that we also provide, clothing, diapers, wipes, formula, and any type of food. But our main goal here is they're wrapping services around these families and finding resources and referrals for them. So just because the family doesn't, they don't have to utilize the crisis day and overnight program. They can call us and we can give them referrals as well. Yeah, and your website has a lot of information about what some of those wraparound services are. So let's say that I am a mom with a young child. I'm a single parent. I'm at my wit's end. I don't know what to do, and someone tells me to call you. What am I going to find when I call you? So when you call the crisis line, we have staff on 24-7, so someone will be answering the phone day or night, and someone will immediately do an intake. So if they're in a crisis situation, we could bring them in immediately, or they could come in right then and there. Sometimes we go out and pick up the families. We have a mobile client navigator who will meet families wherever they're at in the community. So it's depending on whatever the situation is and whatever the crisis, and if it's a severe emergency. If it's a safety concern for the child and the mother, we go out immediately and help that family. If the crisis can get through the night or the child is safe or that situation, we will bring them in immediately. So we can serve up to the child up to 30 days and a six-month period. So the child is free of charge day or night here at the crisis nursery up to can stay here for 30 days and a six-month period. OK, and while a child is there, I'm assuming that things such as food and diapers and hands-on care, all of that is provided. Everything is provided. So they just have to bring the child. We provide 24 hours of food, shelter, safety. And then the case manager that's working with the family, she is wrapping those services around that family. So whatever they're needing, if they're needing, say if they need to get a restraining order, if they're needing to get their homeless or they need to get into any type of resources and referrals to get them in a safe place, even if we're having to get them home hotel vouchers just to save for the night. My case managers are working around the clock to help that family. And then we also, after we serve the family, we follow up with them after three, six, nine, and 12. So we're following this family for a year to make sure that they have the support and anything that they're needing. Wow. OK, so you have touched on, I'm going to assume by what you said, you have relationships with local law enforcement, you have relationship with CPS, and so on. Who are some of your staunchest community partners and other organizations? So we partner with Empower Yellow, the domestic violence shelter. So if anybody is trying to flee domestic violence, we have partnerships with them. And also Empower Yellow, we have a mobile client navigator program called the Family Violence Prevention Project. And we are out there three days a week in there on Walnut Street, helping us supporting any families that are going to the Walnut Street address for Empower Yellow. We partner with Yellow County Children's Alliance. They're a huge partnership with through CalFest and any nurturing parenting programs that we can refer our families to parenting. They're a huge partner in the organization with the Crisis Nursery. But all of our local Communicare health centers, we also have a Road to Resilience in First Five, California. We are huge partners with and provide other programs at the Crisis Nursery. Not only does the Crisis Nursery serve children and families here at the nursery, but we have other programs that we go into the homes and help families. We have a family life skills program that is a 12-week program that we're helping families stabilize in their environment that we partner with Communicare and we do parenting in-home. Instead of asking a parent to find childcare and go find a childcare center and go to parenting, we do hands-on. And right now, due to COVID, we're doing it virtually. And then we have an ABC program that's called Attachment Biobehavioral Catch-Up Program. And this program is to help parents nurture that bond back and that attachment back with their child or if there's any behavioral issues or any concerns. We also, due to COVID, we turn that to virtually. But that is to help the parents and the mother and the father to attach back to the child. And again, I explained the Mobile Client Navigator Program that we partner with. And that program also is we're out in the community reaching the families where they're at and then bringing them back to the nursery to wrap those services around them. We also help foster families in Yellow County as well. That's the Foster Parent Prevention and Retention Program. So any foster family in Yellow County that gets a child in the middle of the night, they can turn to the crisis nursery and ask for rest of the care services. Well, we help them find a long-term plan of childcare or stabilization for that child. We don't want the foster parent to give a seven-day note that that child goes to another foster family. All right. Well, Heather, I was so excited to talk to you because I know that you do so much and what you've just described there is a lot, but I know it's not all of it. So just shout out to all of you and thank you for being local heroes first. And then you touched a little bit on how COVID has impacted your organization. You mentioned a couple of programs that have gone virtual. I realize this is kind of a tiered question because COVID impacts not only our everyday services as nonprofits, but it impacts things like fundraisers. And I believe you had to cancel your big annual fundraiser or pivot it strongly. Can you tell us about that? Yes, our barn dance in October, we had to change it to a more of a online donation because we couldn't have our essential park. We usually have like a barn dance event that fundraises for the crisis nursery. And this year, Travis Credit Union matched us by our wonderful donors in our community who supported the nursery. They matched us with $20,000. So thank you to Travis Credit Union. But yes, our fundraisers for the crisis nursery have been impacted due to, we can't have big events in having multiple people there. Sure, how is the crisis nursery otherwise funded? I see you solicit donations, but what are your other funding mechanisms? So First Five California and First Five YOLO, they help us fund us through programs, safe stays, our overnight program, our mobile client navigator programs are helping us fund some of our programs. We also have organizations and foundations. We write grants. We also have some county funding for the crisis nursery. Other than that, a lot of it is doing donations of fundraisers in our community. All right, and I saw something on your website, which by the way is yolocrisisnursery.org. Make sure we get that out there. That you've been providing some care for essential workers kids. Can you speak to that? Yes, once COVID hit, a lot of childcare centers closed down and we have been helping essential workers as soon as the county opened up, we started helping out the families that had nowhere to turn for their children and care. We had a lot of families that were going back to work that had no one to turn to or they would have lost their job. We also helped out, during this time, we've also had a spike in postpartum depression, being others, being isolated in the home and not having anybody to turn to or help and then the fear of going into medical centers because of getting exposed to COVID. So we've also, that was a huge spike during this time. I can only imagine as we started out talking about, parenting is difficult under the best of circumstances. It can be challenging and yeah, you add a pandemic and all those fears and scarcity and all of that. And I imagine it's greatly magnified. Okay, Heather, if someone needs help, how can they get in touch? And I think there's a couple of different ways. Let's make sure we get the crisis line out there and then for other needs as well. So they can reach us at 530-758-6680. That is our crisis line, that is 24 hours a day. They can also get us on our website at yellowcrisisnettery.org. There's also tabs on the website that you can email directly to an individual here and a case manager or myself or Oscar Lopez who's the operations manager here. It will go directly to us and we will respond immediately. Okay, and similarly, if someone would like to learn more about how they can support you or how they might get involved, how should they reach out to you? So they can reach out us through the website as well. We have all of those links that will go to the right person but they can also call the main line and ask for Oscar Lopez or Heather Sluder myself and see how they can help out. So volunteers are gonna, we love our volunteers but due to COVID we are having extra people in here holding the babies but we will once we're allowed to have more people at capacity at the nursery, we will definitely return to that. We're hoping after the first of the year but time will tell. And then they can always help, we have the friends of the crisis nursery and they're a group that volunteer and help with our fundraisers and really outreach and awareness in our community. They could help and reach out to us as well. Becky heard our development director. She would be happy to talk to anybody regarding helping out on the friend. Great, well Heather, thank you so much for joining me today and thanks for the work that you and the team at Yolo Crisis Nursery do. You're just an incredible asset to Yolo County. So thank you very much. Thank you Jim for having me. You bet, take good care. You take, bye. All right, every now and then I interview someone and the word hero just kind of flashes in front of my eyes and I think the kind of work that they're doing is really heroic. Yolo Crisis Nursery again, YoloCrisisNursery.org. We're gonna take a brief break for music and I'll be back with my second guest. My next guest is Evie Wright, President of Suroptimist International of Davis. Suroptimist is a global volunteer organization that provides women and girls with access to the education and training they need to achieve economic empowerment. I was an active member of this club for many years and I still hold it very, very dear. Welcome Evie and thanks for joining me. Hi, Autumn, it's good to hear from you. You too. So this is kind of like the punchline to a joke. You became president of a club during a pandemic. A club that usually meets weekly and has a lot going on. We're gonna hear a little bit more about that but let's start with the Suroptimist International of Davis mission generally and how the club works to carry out that locally. Sure, so like you said, we work our local community to empower women and girls through education and we are a part of a larger organization, Suroptimist International that's in 100 countries throughout the world and we are a part of the United Nations as well. SI Davis was formed in 1954 so we've been working for over 65 years to empower women and girls through high school scholarships. We give grants to local women who are female heads of household and we also give community grants to nonprofit organizations as well as mentoring high school girls at Martin Luther King High. So that's the main things that we do but we actually have our fingers in a lot of other pots as well. Yeah, SI Davis really puts the service and service club, I'm telling you. So in normal times, your club runs the beer booth, the beer and wine booth at Davis Farmers Market Picnic in the park on Wednesday nights, spring through fall and that's not happening this year. I happen to know that that is the club's single biggest fundraiser to support much of this good work so what does that mean in terms of impact to the club and its mission this year? So generally throughout beer booth season we will make anywhere from 25 to $30,000 and 100% of those proceeds go to empowering women and girls in our community through the programs I talked about before. So what we've really had to do is we really had to pivot into thinking about how we can boost other fundraisers in order to make up for that. So one way is we have done a big day of giving for the last two years and this last year we actually tripled our income from that so that was really, really exciting and then we have our soup auction, the soup and silent auction that we've had for many, many years. It's the Thursday before Thanksgiving and generally we would meet at odd fellows, 20 or 30 soups and people get together and it's a great community event, eating soup, bidding on silent auctions but we cannot have a, you can't have people coming around and eating soup together. Pivoting that into partnering with food work and we will be doing a drive through food service with food work and then we'll have a live program just highlighting some of the things that we do et cetera, et cetera. That will be November 19th and then we will also have a virtual online silent auction as well. And I co-chaired that the auction part of the soup auction for about five years there and we took it from a relatively small event to this kind of big thing that had legs and a lot of people came to every year so I'm really happy to hear that it's gone virtually and you're keeping the tradition going despite obstacles. Let's talk about a suroptimist live your dream, education and training awards for women because I know there's a deadline coming up. Who's eligible, how can folks apply? Okay, so live your dream is it's monetary grants to female heads of household. So anyone who is the primary breadwinner of their household and that they have dependents and they are women who are pursuing a bachelor's degree or some kind of training certification. Grants are anywhere from 500 up to 3000 could be more you never know. And you can use them for any purpose, rent, food, tuition, childcare, anything that's going to help you pursue your dreams and goals. So applications for those are due November 15th and you can join me to go ahead and say where you can find the information and everything. So if you wanted to apply for that, you go to the bit.ly that's B-I-T dot L-Y forward slash L-Y-D-A dash apply and you would enter in our club names Suroptimist International of Davis and then it'll take you through how to apply and if you needed assistance or had any questions you could also email the club at sidavisatsuroptimist.net and we can assist you with that. Great, this is a really important award because oftentimes women will find that there are scholarships if you're going to a two-year college or a four-year college but if you're going to a trade or vocational school, you may be out of luck in that realm and as you said that these monies can be used to support anything that furthers the woman's goals and objectives. So it's really cool. Absolutely, it really, it changes lives, pretty amazing. All right, we are almost out of time. So my last question is how is the club, are you meeting virtually during this time? Are you doing Zoom meetings and all that? We are, so we are committed to meeting during Zoom right now just we want to keep the health and safety of our members and our families as a priority. So we are meeting via Zoom, the second and fourth Wednesdays of the month from 11.45 a.m. to 12.45 p.m. And also on the third Tuesday of the month we're having an evening business meeting from 5.30 to about seven and then there are other activities that we're doing as well like we'll have the hours and things but if you wanted more information you could always email the club or you can go visit our website at sidavis.org. Great, all right, thanks so much for joining me today. I really appreciate hearing what the club is up to and knowing that you're still out there having great impact in the community. Thanks for joining. Okay, thank you so much, Autumn. Take care, bye-bye. Okay, y'all, I'm just gonna say it's Roptimus International of Davis Rocks and the whole Roptimus organization. Very important to me in my formative years of building a career and getting to know people in the community and finding out some of the ways that I like to give back. So sidavis.org. I am gonna thank you dear listeners for tuning in. This has been the COVID-19 Community Report live from the KDRT LP Studio. I'm Autumn LaBeirano and I'll see you next week.