Collaboration with other organizations is essential to providing the best possible services while avoiding redundancy. In addition to partnering with agencies to create unique services, La Luz Center functions as a host site for many agencies from the Sonoma Valley and Santa Rosa in order to ensure that critical resources are accessible to our community.
Brown Baggers
The Sonoma Brown Baggers are an invaluable resource in this community. Besides making sack lunches twice a week for day laborers and homeless individuals, the Brown Baggers partner with La Luz to run the Brown Bag Café, a soup kitchen that serves about 50 bowls of home-made, gourmet soup every Friday. Additionally, the Brown Baggers supply lunches and two meals per week to vineyard workers for two months every year when La Luz operates the annual migrant worker’s camp.
Every Friday, Catholic Charities comes to La Luz Center with fresh produce to distribute to the economically disadvantaged community of Sonoma Valley. Each week, this food feeds about 650 people who might otherwise go without healthy food. Catholic Charities comes to La Luz on the last Tuesday of every month, as well, to distribute even more food.
In addition to the weekly food distribution, Catholic Charities supplies La Luz with non-perishable foods for our own cabinet, so that we can distribute food throughout the week to families in need.
Community Action Partnership (CAP)
La Luz Center works with CAP to provide emergency services and benefits to our clients. Our partnership with CAP allows us to obtain HCA rental assistance in one-time financial crises. CAP is also our collaborator in CalFresh outreach and enrollment.
Friends in Sonoma Helping (FISH)
La Luz Center works with FISH on a daily basis. While La Luz provides both written and oral translation for FISH, FISH helps La Luz clients with food, clothing, and rental assistance.
Legal Aid of Sonoma County provides the indispensible service of free legal consultations to residents of the Springs area. The trip to Santa Rosa is long and difficult for residents without a reliable method of transportation, so bringing Legal Aid to La Luz biweekly is essential.
Redwood Empire Food Bank contributes to the Friday food distributions, supplying dry goods such as tortillas and bread. While the Friday distribution is open to all, Redwood Empire also provides protein-rich food for a distribution every third Wednesday specifically for children who no longer qualify for WIC and for seniors.
For years, La Luz Center has partnered with the Sonoma Valley Adult School to bring English as a Second Language (ESL) classes to our area. This partnership is key to bringing English education to the Springs Area. Community members can come to a convenient and familiar location to learn basic language skills from exceptional teachers.
Sonoma Valley Community Health Center
The Sonoma Valley Community Health Center has long been providing direct service to the Springs and El Verano areas with their mobile health van. Recently, they have extended that service by partnering with La Luz to bring a pediatrician to our site every Monday, in response to the great need for free child health care in our area.
Sonoma County Mental Health Division
Sonoma County Mental Health works with La Luz to address the prevalence of mental health problems in the Sonoma Valley. Counselors from the clinic meet with interested clients at La Luz Center bimonthly to discuss mental health issues and tackle specific problems, both in groups and one-on-one.
Our collaboration with St. Joseph Health Systems encompasses many aspects of our clients’ well-being. Every Friday, La Luz Center hosts the mobile health van, which provides free medical care to uninsured community members. At the same time, St. Joseph brings qualified instructors to teach a nutrition class for women in the La Luz kitchen. With this resource, the nutrition class students can arm themselves with the knowledge they need to get the most out of the food they get from the distribution that day.
Some of our other partnerships include work with:
ABC Special Start
California Parenting Institute
California Rural Legal Assistance
