'A Tireless Advocate': Santa Cruz Local Hero

SANTA CRUZ, CA — When times are tough, heroes emerge. We all know someone who's making a difference right now as we live through unprecedented and changing times.

Here at Patch, we've launched an initiative to help recognize these heroes making a difference in their communities. We’re working to let all your neighbors know about these outstanding people and their stories.

This submission comes from Paul Goldberg who nominated Nancy Jones of Santa Cruz.

Local hero’s full name

Nancy Jones

Local hero’s home state

California

Local hero’s Patch

Santa Cruz

How do you know the local hero?

Amazing volunteer and supporter

What does the local hero do?

Nancy has been an incredible contributor and asset to our nonprofit organization, the Homeless Garden Project. We are a 32 year old organization that offers a year-long core transitional employment program serving people experiencing homelessness with earned wages, job training and support services. We operate this program on our 3.5 acre organic farm and related value-added retail enterprise, where trainees make more than 40 products out of items grown at the Farm. We provide our organic food to the community via shares of our CSA, around half of which are donated to 15 local nonprofits for their clients. We also offer a robust hands-on educational volunteer program to help educate and engage the community in doing something productive around homelessness in our community while building bridges between the housed and unhoused populations.

It is through our volunteer program that Nancy has truly shined. Beginning as a volunteer in our Downtown Santa Cruz store, Nancy learned of our Capitola location, which we were only staffing 2 days a week at a slight financial loss. Nancy took a lead role in motivating and organizing volunteer management of the Capitola location for our retail program, allowing us to expand our open hours to 5 days a week. Nancy truly understands the value of our work and is a tireless advocate for the work we do. By expanding our hours of operation on the esplanade, we not only have increased our revenue, but we are able to message about the work of our organization and galvanize additional support.

Additionally, Nancy has supported our core program as well during our annual job series. From January through March, when the rainy season limits farm work, our training program focuses on preparing trainees in our program on work readiness skills. Nancy has been a wonderful educator leading sessions on resume building and providing helpful guidance to the individuals in our program working to rejoin the workforce.

Why do you believe the local hero should be recognized or honored?

Nancy has given so much of her time, and is a generous donor in support of our work as well. She is a true hero for our community and we are honored to receive her support. She is so enthusiastic in her support of that she has engaged numerous new volunteers and helped expand our roster of supporters. She goes above and beyond in service of the community and we believe she deserves recognition.

What's one thing you want everyone to know about the local hero?

Nancy's deep care for the community can be seen in her enthusiasm and generosity in support of HGP.

Thank you for all you do, Nancy Jones!

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Know someone making a difference in town?

Nominate them here.