Child Parent Institute and Ceres Community Project have been tapped to create climate resiliency centers, programs in southwest Santa Rosa.|
Updated 1 hour ago
If some good has come from the devastating wildfires and floods that ravaged Sonoma County in 2017, 2019 and 2020, it was that many of us have learned coping skills.
We know what go bags are, we understand evacuation plans and we likely have an inventory of items in our homes.
And we also understand that some communities are more adversely affected than others when climate disasters strike.
To that end, two Sonoma County nonprofit agencies received a combined nearly $10 million in state grant funding to support programs and resiliency centers to help people cope both in the heat of a disaster and in the wake of it.
The Child Parent Institute in southwest Santa Rosa and Ceres Community Project received grants of $5 million and $4.8 million respectively in the first-ever round of funding from the California Strategic Growth Council.
Sonoma County was one of just five counties in California to receive more than one grant in this first cycle of $93.6 million in grants, according to Amar Cid, deputy director of community investments and planning for the Council.
“The idea is to really equip communities with resilience spaces during a climate emergency, but also create trusted networks when we have blue skies,” Cid said.
The Council tapped two nonprofits that have been working with underserved communities for years.
The $5 million awarded to the Child Parent Institute will go toward transforming their current campus on Standish Avenue into a community resilience hub where families can seek safety during extreme weather days, power failures and other climate-related crises, said Robin Bowen, the group’s executive director.
Solar arrays will be installed, heating and cooling systems will be replaced and areas will be remodeled to act as cooling centers and shelters during extreme weather days. They will purchase back up generators so the campus can run “days on end” during disasters, Bowen said.
“It will be a resilience center for families to be able to come during climate disasters,” Bowen said.
And while the planned resilience center will be familiar to many area families already tapped into CPI’s services, it will be ramped up in the face of disaster: Shelter, supply distribution, emergency child care and resource navigation.
For decades CPI has worked in its southwest Santa Rosa location, offering family counseling services and classes for parents, therapy, autism support services and supervised visitation sites. They currently house a nonpublic school for a small number of students with individual needs on their campus.
About a quarter of CPI’s grant will go toward programming, Bowen said, including parent training, as well as programs on climate mental health concerns focused on educating teachers, educators and mental health professionals.
“We are working on two paths,” Bowen said. “Solarizing our campus, getting back up batteries so we can run for days on end without power and also air filters and HVAC units. The other part is hiring staff and training community, creating parenting classes and support groups for parents around how to talk to your kids about climate change.”
“It’s hard being a parent,” she said. “We could all use extra support and advice. And the heat, the wind, the smoke, it all makes us start getting on edge.”
The training will focus on mental health issues related to climate — including stressors related to work risks, missing school, physical health concerns — as well as advocacy, Bowen said.
“We are creating a parent leadership academy to (teach) leadership skills so they can be advocates in the community, speak up at school board meetings about climate issues, what to do in case of emergencies and being the point people in the neighborhood when there is a fire or earthquake,” she said.
Both CPI and Ceres are actively seeking additional funding to finalize their plans.
CPI is seeking $800,000 in donations, the vast majority of which will be used to pay off the mortgage on the Standish Avenue property. Debt retirement was written into the grant.
“What the grant doesn’t do is … pay off our existing mortgage to make this whole project work. It’s part of the sustainability plan. What they liked about our proposal is we said we could keep looking for more money,” Bowen said. “I feel that is very doable.”
The $4.8 million granted to Ceres puts the operation within striking distance of its capital campaign goal of $22 million for its long-planned Center for Food, Youth & Community in Southwest Santa Rosa near the Kaiser Permanente Mercury Way location.
The bulk of their award, $3 million, will go toward the approximately 19,600-square foot facility that will allow Ceres to quadruple the number of clients served through their volunteer-driven program of making organic and medically tailored meals for those living with serious, chronic health conditions.
“It’s a super exciting and transformational moment for us. We are incredibly grateful for the community support,” Ceres CEO and founder Cathryn Couch said.
Groundbreaking is on track for September, she said.
The new facility will be energy self-sufficient, and a space for those in the community to take shelter, in most climate-induced conditions, including smoke days, power shut-offs and poor air quality, Couch said.
Plans call for the facility to be 100% electric with 60% coverage from on-site solar panels and a microgrid sponsored by a $1.2 million Self-Generation Incentive Program grant from PG&E.
The facility is expected to be able to be operational for approximately 10 days without traditional power sources, she said. And that is key, considering Ceres is contracted with Sonoma County to provide meals to evacuation shelters during emergencies.
The need for Ceres’ meals skyrocketed during the pandemic.
In 2019, volunteers grew and created 80,000 meals. In 2023, the meal total reached 215,000.
The new center will have capacity to grow, over the course of a decade, to accommodate 800,000 meals annually, Crouch said.
Ceres is on the cusp of reaching their goal in a capital campaign running through June 30, during which donations will be doubled by Redwood Credit Union, Ginnie and Peter Haas Jr. Fund and an anonymous donor.
“People are generous out of an expectation that we are going to deliver and we take that really seriously at Ceres,” Couch said.
You can reach Staff Columnist Kerry Benefield at 707-526-8671 or kerry.benefield@pressdemocrat.com. On Instagram @kerry.benefield.