Betty McWilliams, Executive Director of the Foothill Unity Center joined us today for a holiday update on the recent progress the Center has made caring for the homeless in the area. The Center is currently assembling food boxes at the L.A. County Arboretum to be distributed to needy families. In fact, a thousand boxes for a thousand families, says Betty, with the help of two hundred volunteers this morning and another one hundred volunteers to relieve them this afternoon. Joining Betty was Mary Ann Lutz, a Monrovia Rotary Club past president and current Board President of the Unity Center. Betty and Mary Ann shared that the Center serves eleven San Gabriel Valley cities, serving the working poor, retired, disabled and homeless community. The Center provides food, health services, temporary crisis care and even a pet food bank. Oh yes, they also provide tax assistance to those seniors and others in need. It not only takes a “Village” to accomplish it, last year 6000 volunteers helped make it all happen.

In their current location, they work out of three cramped buildings, two in Monrovia, one in Pasadena, having to conduct daily case management, etc. while other clients are in the same office waiting for service. Recently the Center, Betty, Mary Ann and Raina Martinez, Development Director, along with their Board, made a real estate purchase of one of the vacant World Vision buildings on Chestnut Ave. in Monrovia.  The building is really a solution to the cramped quarters and a dream that is quickly coming true.   The new location is two-story, 28,000 square feet with warehouse space, office space, job training, conference rooms and three kitchens where they plan classes to instruct basic food preparation and nutrition. Even the volunteers will have their own office. “From Dream to Reality” is the new building campaign slogan and rightly so. World Vision generously financed half of the purchase price for the Foothill Unity Center new building while the Center has raised the other half through professional fund raising efforts. We wish the very best of the Holiday Season for our friends at the Foothill Unity Center. Congratulations on achieving your goal and taking it, “From Dream to Reality”.

(Pat Dolphin)