Optimist Club Hands Out Final Six Grants

Another nine community organizations received grants from the Pacific Palisades Optimist Club on August 13, based upon their work benefiting local youth. Ten organizations collected their checks at the July 23 meeting at Aldersgate Retreat Center.
Every year, the Optimist Club receives net proceeds from the Palisades-Will Rogers Fourth of July Run, which it reinvests back into the community. Several dozen Optimists volunteer at the race to help with registration, pass out T-shirts, man the water tables and handle other jobs.
This year’s grants totaled $46,000 to nonprofits that “are dedicated to bring out the best in kids,” said Optimist president Stu Kaiser.

The final 2013 recipients included:
• Rob Weber, president of the Palisades Americanism Parade Association, who said the grant would help his committee meet its $100,000 budget to present the Fourth of July parade, the pre-fireworks concert and the fireworks show.
• Brook Doughery, executive director of Young Angels of America, a Pacific Palisades-based organization founded in 2002. “Our mission is to teach middle and high school students about philanthropy and community service,” she said. “Our student founder, Matthew Geffner, passed away this year, at age 25, and we will be using our grant ($1,000) to honor him.”  On Tuesday this week, Young Angels began holding leadership dinner meetings at Matthew’s Café on Swarthmore and facilitating discussions of local and global concern. The meetings will be taped and shared.
• Joan Graves and Patricia Nettleship, director of the La Senora Research Institute Foundation, received $3,800 to help pay for costs associated with bringing student field trips to the Institute’s historic 1920s Mojica hacienda and botanical gardens in Santa Monica Canyon. Students visit the house and then walk to the equally historic Pascual Marquez Family Cemetery, a designated Historic Cultural Monument. The cemetery lies on a tiny piece of the 1839 Mexican land Grant that is still in the hands of the original grantee’s descendants.
• Ryan Bushore, principal of Corpus Christi School ($2,500), and Pam Magee, principal and executive director of Palisades Charter High School ($5,000 to help support the school’s new iPad program for all ninth graders).
• Pastor Wally Mees of the Palisades Lutheran Church, who will use his $1,000 grant to support the church’s youth program.
Conrad Solum chaired the Optimist committee that oversaw the grant selections, joined by members George LaBrot, Bill Snyder and Anne Vogel.
The club has been supporting youth programs and activities in Pacific Palisades for 56 years. Meetings are held every Tuesday morning at the Aldersgate Retreat Center.