Two ribbon-cutting ceremonies

Two major construction projects had inaugural ceremonies within 200
yards of El Camino Real and Embarcadero Road in Palo Alto within the last 24 hours. Here's a quick scorecard:

	Stanford Stadium	Opportunity Center
Purpose	Venue for football games, commencements, other major events	Housing for previously homeless singles and families, drop-in social services such as laundry, mailboxes, showers, etc.
Opening Date	Sept. 16, 2006	Sept. 17, 2006
Construction Cost	$90M	$24M
Private money raised	$90M	$9M
Start Date	November 26,2005	September 13, 2001
Capacity	50,000	131 (approx.)
Replaces...	84 year old 85,500 seat stadium	Canopy in field behind Red Cross building
Media Coverage (from Google News)	26 articles	1 article
Website	www.stanfordstadium.com	www.opportunitycenter.org
Bands Playing at Inaguration	1, Navy's (Stanford Band had been banned...)	4

I was personally moved to see the opening of the Opportunity Center. It's an amazing facility, with computer labs, a playground, a medical center, private and common areas that let residents share community or have personal space. I know that many people were critical to its creation, but wanted to especially acknowledge Jim Burklo, a minister in Sausalito, and former pastor at Stanford as well as founder of Urban Ministries of Palo Alto, for being one of they key visioniaries and tireless advocates for not just the building and its programs but also the people the building and program serve.

Thank you, Jim!

DonorsChoose "September to Remember"

My last post was also about DonorsChoose, but since it's been 3 months, and they've got a new campaign going, I wanted to write about it again. As a result of my last challenge (Thanks to all those who contributed!) and some confusion on my part for the way people contributed to it, I ended up with several gift certificates after the proposal in my challenge had already been fully funded.

I knew that they're in the midst of a big fund drive for the month of September ($1.2M nationwide, $250K in California) so I figured this would be a good time to cash in some of those gift certificates.

I had a lot of fun doing it.

In each case, I was able to find a project that I thought would be meaningful to the person who had given me the gift certificate:

• A couple from San Jose, he got his degree in math. For them, I found a San Jose school that was looking for math teaching aids for kindergartners.
  
  
• A friend from San Mateo who's into photography. For him, I found a program in San Bruno that's encouraging writing skills for a "Severely Disordered Language Day Class" of high schoolers through digital photography.
  
  
• A family from Venezuela with a girl in first grade. For them, I found a project that helps kindergartners in San Jose by hearing tapes of stories in English, even if they come from non-English speaking homes.
  
  
• A friend from Oakland who was born in Iran. For her, I found a teacher in Oakland whose class of 9th graders will read Persepolis, a story about a girl who lives through the Iranian revolution, as a way to teach Iranian history.
  

If you're puzzling over what to get that difficult to shop for friend or relative, I was amazed at the range of meaningful projects that are part of the DonorsChoose list. Please take a look at the challenge grant and see if you're as lucky as I was in finding the appropriate gift.