Lets give all these Board Members a big hand. [ applause ]. I mentioned earlier we went through the slog of trying to find something to buy so then we can figure out what we can build and how much it will cost. The first person who probably had to go through therapy after joining me on this effort was dan mckue our real estate representative and literally we worked for two and a half yeas s to get to this site and bewent through three pricing scoping and buying exercises and so forth. Did you thank you, dan, for working with me and still being able to call me a friend. We also have identified an al allstar team to help us with this kitchen and build it. The first person i mentioned earlier but i want to call out specifically again is mike bal divrks dwin from kitchen concepts. Mike was chosen not because hes one of the best in the field nationally, but because he served for decades in the meals on wheels in anaheim. When i saw his work there, i said youre the right guy for s us. Youre the person who understand s how were different and uni e unique. Thank you. We also want to thank that we have a local San Francisco lve, local business entrerprise, ja k jackson and lyles architect uru is our architect. The architects could not be here today, but iron ically their parents are. Welcome and thank you for being here. We also have engaged a really good friend of meals on wheels for years, an excellent general contractor ain plant constructin and we have an amazing team assembled under the leadership and the determination of don b libby. We also have a great owners p rep. This is the person that keeps our staff from having to deal with the mash nations and tell us what that means is keith d debrian from skyline partners. Keith, thank you. And an amazing three iio of peoe to make sure we build the best building. First is david who is under arrest our operations officer. Frank scotted our director of facilities. An amazing asset to the organization. The guys that keep s me out of jail as well as making sure having money in the bank is the cfo. [ applause ]. Even with the bestlaid pl s plans, we would not be breaking ground today without an Extraordinary Group of organizations and people whove g come together to allow us to move this process forward quickly and they have done there through this through the new market task credit process. For those of you who dont know what those are, youre blessed. [ laughter ]. But just for the sake of education, basically the federal government incentivize s throug tax credits investment s and stressed communityies, programs that serve dis advertistreasurer that serve dis advertistreasur s distressed populations. Our propositiject definitely f t that. It aligns credit s that organizations manage to give to projects and theyre aligned with these approved projects and then at the eback end take s a ba bank credit. At the end of the day thats going to deliver about 8. 1 million to this project. [ applause ]. I just want to really acknowledge the team that really have pushed this forward quickly on this project. First of all , david wilkin sos has been our consultant from Northern CaliforniaCommunity Loan fund. Thank you, david. Thank you for helping me understand this weave of stuff and so forth. Leading the way to make sure that we anchor the new market tax credit that we needed for the project is the city of San Francisco and the San FranciscoCommunity Investment fund, or as we call it sfif. Without them jumping in and p putting their projestamp on thi project, i dont know if othes s would have joined as easily. We just wareally want to thank e sfif for supporting us. Along side of the sfif, San Francisco sfif was california loan fund who in vvested with u early as well. The group that put us over the top is an Organization CalledCommunity Impact partners which is more of a National Partner and they came in to push us forward as well. The irony is that two of these organizations are doing more than just giving us credits. Theyre actually funding our construction loan and thats Community Vision and Community Impact partners. We want to thank you for keeping us sane and giving us that option. We really appreciate it. I mentioned only the the back et a Bank Investor partner usually comes into a project like this, that partner is j. Pvmentep. Mo chase. We want to thank them to chase bank. Lastly, obviously you know that in order to put together a complex transaction you have to have a good team around you and i want to thank liouise rodrige and also chris and brine and v novaradik our cpa. Youre probably going like, gee, thats a lot of people, but its not the end. We ultimately also have to bridge our pledges the jen ro generosity the people have pledged to make sure we dont have longterm debt. We need a bridge loan, we want to thank our piartner First Republic bank to bridge that pledge loan and fragile for frankly for banking our loan. Well mention again later, they also gave quite a big gift to the campaign. Thank you. Its now my pleasure to really move us into thanking the other 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, thats russ flin and hjose allen. [ applause ]. Thank you, ashley. Good morning, everyone. I am hjose allen. Im 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 jumpstart 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 cochair russ flin and his wife leigh. Actually they didnt 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, were 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 doesnt 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. Im 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 didnt feel this was a possibility that we could realize. Ashley thank you sincerely for our efforts. Now ill get back on script. Hjose, thank you for all youve done. Without hjose i wouldnt begin o know how to raise money. Hes done this socio mamany tis. While ive raised money for political campaigns, ive 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 ]. Id 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 weve raised 80 of our funds, we still need 20 fmore. So id 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, its 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 wouldnt be here without you. Were 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 were going to do somethi something i dont know how were 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 dont think none of us who dont 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 dont 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 thats unparalleled. Again, my deep eest and most sincere appreciation to them. I specifically want to thank our Development Team led by Jessica Sweedler and weve been working together now for 12 years and we almost feel like were 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 didnt staff up to run this campaign, were just running it. Were running it on top of the 7 or 8 million that we have already. We had the heart to do it and weve 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 didnt call your name, please know how appreciative i am to you for what you do to support us in this work every single day. Its not possible to do. What were going to try to do okay. Everybody lets count down from five. Five, four, three, two, one. Yay. [ cheering and applause ] as a society weve basically failed big portion of our population if you think about the basics of food, shelter safety a lot of people dont have any of those im mr. Cookie cant speak for all the things but i know say, i have ideas how we can address the food issue. Open the door and walk through that dont just stand looking out. As they grew up in in a how would that had access to good food and our parent cooked this is how you feed yours this is not happening in our country this is a huge pleasure im david one of the cofounder so about four year ago we worked with the serviced and got to know the kid one of the things we figured out was that they didnt know how to cook. I heard about the Cooking School through the Larkin Academy a. Their noting no way to feed themselves so theyre eating a lot of fast food and i usually eat whatever safeway is near my home a lot of hot food i was excited that i was eating lunch enough instead of what and eat. As i was inviting them over teaching them basic ways to fix good food they were so existed. Particle learning the skills and the food they were really go it it turned into the is Charity Foundation i ran into my friend we were talking about this this do you want to run this Charity Foundations and she said, yes. Im a cofound and executive director for the cooking project our best classes participation for 10 students are monday theyre really fun their chief driven classes we have a different guest around the city theyre our stand alone colas we had a series or series still city of Attorneys Office style of classes our final are night life diners. Santa barbara shall comes in and helps us show us things and this is one the owners they help us to socialize and ive been here about a year. We want to be sure to serve as many as we can. The San FranciscoCooking School is an amazing amazing partner. It is doing that in that space really elevates the space for the kids special for the chief that make it easy for them to come and it really makes the experience pretty special. Im sutro sue set im a chief 2, 3, 4 San Francisco. Thats what those classes afford me the opportunity it breakdown the barriers and is this is not scary this is our choice about you many times this is a feel good what it is that you give them is an opportunity you have to make it seem like its there for them for the taking show them it is their and they can do that. Hi, im antonio the chief in San Francisco. The majority of kids at that age in order to get them into food they need to see something simple and the evidence will show and easy to produce i want to make sure that people can do it with a bowl and spoon and burner and one pan. I like is the receipts that are simple and not feel like its a burden to make foods the cohesives show something eased. I go for vera toilet so someone cant do it or its way out of their range we only use 6 ingredients i can afford 6 ingredient what good is showing you them something they cant use but the sovereignties what are you going to do more me youre not successful. We made a vegetable stirfry indicators hed ginger and onion that is really affordable how to balance it was easy to make the food we present i loved it if i having had access to a kitchen id cook more. Some of us have never had a kitchen not taught how to cookie wasnt taught how to cook. I have a great appreciation for programs that teach kids food and cooking it is one of the healthiest positive things you can communicate to people that are very young. The more programs like the cooking project in general that can have a positive impact how our kids eat is really, really important i believe that everybody should venting to utilize the kitchen and meet other kids their age to identify theyre not alone and their ways in which to pick yours up and move forward that. It is really important to me the opportunity exists and so i do everything in my power to keep it that. Well have our new headquarters in the heart of the tenderloin at taylor and kushlg at the end of this summer 2014 were really excited. A lot of the of the conditions in San Francisco they have in the rest of the country so our goal to 257bd or expand out of the San Francisco in los angeles and then after that who know. Wed never want to tell people want to do or eat only provide the skills and the tools in case thats something people are 2rrd in doing. You cant buy a box of psyche you have to put them in the right vein and direction with the right kids with a right place address time those kids dont have this you have to instill they can do it theyre good enough now to finding out figure out and find the future for francisco. My name is fwlend hope i would say on at largescale what all passionate about is peace in the world. It never outdoor 0 me that note everyone will think that is a good i know to be a paefrt. One man said ill upsetting the order of universe i want to do since a good idea not the order of universe but his offered of the universe but the ministry sgan in the room chairing sha harry and grew to be 5 we wanted to preach and teach and act gods love 40 years later i retired having been in the tenderloin most of that 7, 8, 9 some have god drew us into the someplace we became the Network Ministries for homeless women escaping prostitution if the months period before i performed Memorial Services store produced women that were murdered on the streets of San Francisco so i went back to the board and said we say to do something the number one be a safe place for them to live while he worked on changing 4 months later we were given the building in january of 1998 we opened it as a safe house for women escaping prostitution ive seen those counselors women find their strength and their beauty and their wisdom and come to be able to affirmative as the daughters of god and they accepted me and made me, be a part of the their lives. Special things to the women that offered me a chance safe house will forever be a part of the who ive become and you made that possible life didnt get any better than that. Whove would know this look of this girl grown up in atlanta will be working with produced women in San Francisco part