people who really put down significant mark er s and donatn s and pledges to this campaign and invite other people who have really lifted for me so long to come up and thank people who have participated, that's russ flin and hjose allen. [ applause ]. >> thank you, ashley. good morning, everyone. i am hjose allen. i'm a member of the board of meals on wheels frisk san francisco, and along with russ flin, i co chachaired the 50th s anniversary capital campaign. us russ and i are proud to be part of this vital project and to be able to thank each of you for your support of meals on wheels. clearly to be successful in r e raising almost 41, dlr $42 needed for this project require s extensive jen rgenerosity for, many support er s. luckily we have been successful in raising the funds necessary to move forward and have secured 80% of our goal. we have 20% left to go. now, it gives me great pleasure to thank the individuals. i call them our first responder s p who helped jump-start this campaign. first, there are two familyies who have been part of the meals on wheels family for over 30 years and have led the way with their lead gifts. the first is my he esteemed co f co-chair russ flin and his wife leigh. actually they didn't stop with just making their personal gift to the campaign, but they added to their gift by challenging their family and friends to join the efforts. so for that, we're very, very thankful. [ applause ] sjts. >> the second family i would like to thank is the sanjakamo family through the yvonne and n angelo sanjakamo foundation. here today is the daughter to recognize her mom who could not be abowith us. thank you again and thanks to the sanjakamo family for their support. [ applause ]. >> next, while they could not be here today, i would like to thank our meals on wheels hon honorary board chair andy and a carrie good mman, who have led e way in this campaign not only through their financial contributions to the campaign, but through their in sigsight s un titiring deadication to meal wheels. [ applause ]. >> now, there are 42 additional individual donor s thus far, bu our program schedule today doesn't allow me to call each of them out individually, but there are a few that i would like to thank. here they are. emily and sam glick, diane pe c pelaconi and susan sanjakamo, debbie and andy rat cliff, craig and maureen sullivan. rosemary and harry wong and lisa and todd zabel. we are truly grateful for these and other individuals who have helped bring us to the threshold of a successful capital campa n campaign. i look forward to being with all of you at our dedication in the last quarter of 2020 when we will have an opportunity to memorialise all the gueift s toe campaign through naming and donor recognition. thank you sooch for your supp t support. [ applause ]. >> thank you, hjose. i'm russ flin. i would like to start off by acknowledging ashley and all of his hue mmility for having the leadership ability to drag this board, some of who left the board because they didn't feel this was a possibility that we could realize. ashley thank you sincerely for our efforts. >> now i'll get back on script. hjose, thank you for all you've done. without hjose i wouldn't begin o know how to raise money. he's done this socio mamany tis. while i've raised money for political campaigns, i've rarely raised money for floirp -- p l philantropic. i would like to thank all the organizations and foundations that have contributed to this. the urps foundation, city of san francisco office of economic and workforce development, first republic bank, kooeizer perman e permanententy, crescent port ee hail foundation, walter and a s alise habb foundation, the bob ross fowks foundation, and our only one technology contributor, usual -- uber, and that un fortunately has been a little bit of a shortcoming in our campaign. while we have the mayor here -- [ laughter ]. >> -- i'd like to challenge her to maybe open the door to a few more of these folks and give e jose and i a chance to see if we can convince them to make contributions. while we've raised 80% of our funds, we still need 20% fmore. so i'd challenge everyone here who has already given to re consider and think about just stretching just a little bit more and that can help put us over the 41.2 -- 41.5, $42 million that we need. thank you all for coming today and, ashley, it's yours. [ applause ]. >> sincerely, i think you can see it pretty easily how blessed we are to have russ and hjose ad frankly every board member and b donor associated with this. we wouldn't be here without you. we're coming to the end of the speaking program. i give you the chance to re lla but also to secelebrate a littl bit. we' now we're going to do somethi something -- i don't know how we're going to do this, but i do want to offer a few closing thanks and instructions. flawl first of all , can we jut give our staff that work every day delivering food -- [ applause ]. >> -- answering the phones, i just don't think none of us who don't do this work think about what it means to walk up buil buildings and six flights of stairs with food in our your hand and buildings with he wieor s that don't work and getting in and out of a car. we have pretsocial worker s goi trying to help people who literally have nothing and people who have challenges and so forth and we have a staff that back them up that's unparalleled. again, my deep eest and most sincere appreciation to them. i specifically want to thank our development team led by jessica sweedler and we've been working together now for 12 years and we almost feel like we're kind of a dentist function ental -- di dysfunction al family, but a god one working together. frankly i think why both she and i deserve credit is we didn't staff up to run this campaign, we're just running it. we're running it on top of the $ $7 or $# 8 million that we have already. we had the heart to do it and we've been successful. thank you all. i also want to thank the team who worked hard on this event specifically, david miranda, our events manager, jim on hzwald o communications and marketing director. [ applause ]. >> and the person who has the hard eest job on earth, being m assistant, michelle fur longi longing -- fur long. and if i didn't call your name, please know how appreciative i am to you for what you do to support us in this work every single day. it's not possible to do. what we're going to try to do -- >> okay. everybody let's count down from five. >> five, four, three, two, one. yay. [ cheering and applause ] >> usf donates 100-120 pounds of food a night. for the four semesters we have been running here, usf has donated about 18,000 pounds of food to the food recovery network. ♪ ♪ >> i'm maggie. >> i'm nick. >> we're coe-chairs of the national led organization. what food recovery does is recover and redistribute food that would go wasted and redistributing to people in the community. >> the moment that i became really engaged in the cause of fighting food waste was when i had just taken the food from the usf cafeteria and i saw four pans full size full of food perfectly fine to be eaten and made the day before and that would have gone into the trash that night if we didn't recover it the next day. i want to fight food waste because it hurts the economy, it's one of the largest emitters of greenhouse gases in the world. if it was a nation, it would be the third largest nation behind china and the united states. america wastes about 40% of the food we create every year, $160 billion worth and that's made up in the higher cost of food for consumers. no matter where you view the line, you should be engaged with the issue of food waste. ♪ ♪ >> access edible food that we have throughout our lunch program in our center, i go ahead and collect it and i'll cool it down and every night i prep it up and the next day i'll heat it and ready for delivery. it's really natural for me, i love it, i'm passionate about it and it's just been great. i believe it's such a blessing to have the opportunity to actually feed people every day. no food should go wasted. there's someone who wants to eat, we have food, it's definitely hand in hand and it shouldn't be looked at as work or a task, we're feeding people and it really means so much to me. i come to work and they're like nora do you want this, do you want that? and it's so great and everyone is truly involved. every day, every night after every period of food, breakfast, lunch, dinner, i mean, people just throw it away. they don't even think twice about it and i think as a whole, as a community, as any community, if people just put a little effort, we could really help each other out. that's how it should be. that's what food is about basically. >> an organization that meets is the san francisco knight ministry we work with tuesday and thursday's. ♪ ♪ by the power ♪ of your name >> i have faith to move mountains because i believe in jesus. >> i believe it's helpful to offer food to people because as you know, there's so much homelessness in san francisco and california and the united states. i really believe that food is important as well as our faith. >> the san francisco knight ministry has been around for 54 years. the core of the ministry, a group of ordain ministers, we go out in the middle of the night every single night of the year, so for 54 years we have never missed a night. i know it's difficult to believe maybe in the united states but a lot of our people will say this is the first meal they've had in two days. i really believe it is a time between life or death because i mean, we could be here and have church, but, you know, i don't know how much we could feed or how many we could feed and this way over 100 people get fed every single thursday out here. it's not solely the food, i tell you, believe me. they're extremely grateful. >> it's super awesome how welcoming they are. after one or two times they're like i recognize you. how are you doing, how is school? i have never been in the city, it's overwhelming. you get to know people and through the music and the food, you get to know people. >> we never know what impact we're going to have on folks. if you just practice love and kindness, it's a labor of love and that's what the food recovery network is and this is a huge -- i believe they salvage our mission. >> to me the most important part is it's about food waste and feeding people. the food recovery network national slogan is finding ways to feed people. it's property to bring the scientific and human element into the situation. >> everything is done in-house. i think it is done. i have always been passionate about gelato. every single slaver has its own recipe. we have our own -- we move on from there. so you have every time a unique experience because that slaver is the flavored we want to make. union street is unique because of the neighbors and the location itself. the people that live around here i love to see when the street is full of people. it is a little bit of italy that is happening around you can walk around and enjoy shopping with gelato in your hand. this is the move we are happy to provide to the people. i always love union street because it's not like another commercial street where you have big chains. here you have the neighbors. there is a lot of stories and the neighborhoods are essential. people have -- they enjoy having their daily or weekly gelato. i love this street itself. >> we created a move of an area where we will be visiting. we want to make sure that the area has the gelato that you like. what we give back as a shop owner is creating an ambient lifestyle. if you do it in your area and if you like it, then you can do it on the streets you like. >> we are so excited -- i am cheryl lynn adams, director of market street youth services, and we work with young people to 24 who need laundry or place to hangout or come in from outside to get the tools they need to begin to resolve their homelessness. we have lots of programs and lots of educational and behavioral health supports that are here throughout the city. we are excited to be here with our partners to launch or to be a small part of the effort to address child trafficking. larkin street started years ago with huckleberry to fight youth trafficking. we know without intervention on the streets, children are at high risk for trafficking if we don't get to them soon. i think the most wonderful thing about this partnership is the prevention and the early intervention and the collaboration and us bringing together so many partners to work on this issue in a very profound way. we're excited to be here and excited to be a small part of it. and i am always honored and delighted to get to introduce our -- our mayor. mayor breed has been in office for just about a year now, right -- tomorrow? wow. [applause] >> she has been an active supporter of homelessness, of youth homelessness, of diamond youth shelter, which is one of the -- our part in this project, and so much more in the city to support young people to help all -- to help so many of us -- so many residents in san francisco thrive, and i am deeply honored to introduce you this morning, so welcome. [applause] >> the hon. london breed: thank you. i am excited to be here. thank you, cheryl lynn, and thank you to larkin street for all the work that you continue to do to support young people in san francisco and huckaberry, i'm excited to have this organization as well as other organizations for partnering what we are announcing today, which is a $9.3 million grant from the department of social services for the state of california, which is absolutely incredible. [applause] >> the hon. london breed: this was a very competitive grant, and it was awarded to ten partnering organizations who helped to deal with the challenges that we know sadly so many of our young people face around sexual exploitation. in fact, in 2017 in san francisco, we had over 300 reported cases from young people of sexual exploitation. and in most cases, they were women of color and women from our lgbtq community. we know that just last year, cheryl lynn and the folks from larkin street, we announced the rising up campaign where we are determined and committed to end youth homelessness in san francisco, investing millions of dollars in providing the kinds of support and wraparound services that young people in order to get their lives on track. we know that all young people may not have that safety net, may not have that support. i did not have that support in my family. in fact, i was so lucky that i had a grandmother that took in my brothers and me and raised us. my grandmother was very strict, very focused, she determined to make sure she did everything she could to protect us. when young people don't have that safety net, when they don't have that support, when they don't have that protection, sadly, that's when they turn to predators and do things that they never thought they'd do. and this $9.3 million grant allows us to provide services and housing, and to track and find out what we can do better to keep this from happening in the first place. so i'm excite todd to see how is going to change the lives of so money youany young people i city. we are well on our way to addressing so many challenges that we know we face one at a time. it takes dedicated partners, it takes dedicated public servants, it takes dedicated people from the public community who care about addressing these issues, and so i want to thank each and every one of you for being here today. this is an amazing, amazing grant, and i am looking forward to the implementation and changes that i know are going to come forward as a result of this funding. thank you so much. [applause] >> the hon. london breed: and with that, i'd like to introduce the director for the commission on the status of women, emily murase. [applaus [applause] >> commissioner murase: thank you so much, mayor. i wanted to recognize the mayor for empowerment of youth and her focused commitment to housing individuals who are homeless. as you know, commercially sexually exploited children are mostly homeless. it's really one of the root causes of this problem, and now, it's my great pleasure to introduce the executive director and founder of freedom forward, alia whitney johnson and doug styles, my second grade classmate and director of huckleberry youth program. please give them a warm welcome. [applause] >> good morning. thank you, cheryl lynn for hosting us this morning, and thank you, mayor breed and commissioner murase for the work that you do on behalf of young people in our community. i realize that commercial sexual exploitation is a story of failures. times that we have failed to meet young people's needs, and these young people have taken their needs into their own hands. times to fail to respond with compassion when they needed us has added to their story. but within this story is a story of incredible youth brilliances, a story of navigating the system, a hustle that is purposely resourceful, resilient. knowledge that is absolutely critical if we want to build a vibrant, healthy system that works for all. these are the voices that we are centering in this continuum. they deserve choices, and they deserve a system that works for them and a voice in what that system should be. by ensuring young people are a part of our design process, and that we build in feedback loops to honor their input, we believe we will build a more effective system of care for all. so what is this collaborative that we're building and here today to announce? through this grant, we're bringing together 11 community partners to develop a continuum of services that we hope will meet youth where they are, recognizing that meaningful change is rarely linear and needs to meet youth when they are ready. this continuum includes five major components as well as a protocol for navigating those components and a rigorous evaluation. we hope to openly share our successes learned, and if effective, to replicate what works across the state. the five components of this continuum include first, a drop-in center where youth will be able to access services under one roof whether or not they identify as being exploited or currently being housed in the continuum. second, a launch pad shelter for youth transitioning from life on the streets or unsafe living situations. third, a short-term residential treatment program. fourth, a new model of family-based foster care right here in their community with wraparound support. and finally, 24-7 response and emergency services. family first will be leading the foster and family services. we a our role will be to facilitate and coordinate services from across our community, bringing the best our community has to offer, remaining accountable to what youth want. in early 2020, we also aim to launch our family-based foster care pilot. as many of you in this room now, problems in foster care often lead teams to being moved around -- teens to being moved around, isolated, surrounded by only professionals, far from loved ones and the people who they care most about. all of this instability and lock of connection makes an environment that's ripe for exploitation. we plan to pilot a new model of foster care that will provide stable family homes right here in their community and will wrap youth and families with both the professional support that they need as well as a real emphasis on the relationship with family and friends that youth want in their lives. this pilot will engage a great team of providers in what they do best, including family builders, west coast children's clinic,