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 ] usf donates 100120 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. Im maggie. Im nick. Were coechairs 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 didnt recover it the next day. I want to fight food waste because it hurts the economy, its 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 thats 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 ill cool it down and every night i prep it up and the next day ill heat it and ready for delivery. Its really natural for me, i love it, im passionate about it and its just been great. I believe its such a blessing to have the opportunity to actually feed people every day. No food should go wasted. Theres someone who wants to eat, we have food, its definitely hand in hand and it shouldnt be looked at as work or a task, were feeding people and it really means so much to me. I come to work and theyre like nora do you want this, do you want that . And its 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 dont 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. Thats how it should be. Thats what food is about basically. An organization that meets is the San Francisco knight ministry we work with tuesday and thursdays. By the power of your name i have faith to move mountains because i believe in jesus. I believe its helpful to offer food to people because as you know, theres 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 its difficult to believe maybe in the United States but a lot of our people will say this is the first meal theyve 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 dont 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. Its not solely the food, i tell you, believe me. Theyre extremely grateful. Its super awesome how welcoming they are. After one or two times theyre like i recognize you. How are you doing, how is school . I have never been in the city, its overwhelming. You get to know people and through the music and the food, you get to know people. We never know what impact were going to have on folks. If you just practice love and kindness, its a labor of love and thats what the Food Recovery Network is and this is a huge i believe they salvage our mission. To me the most important part is its about food waste and feeding people. The Food Recovery NetworkNational Slogan is finding ways to feed people. Its property to bring the scientific and Human Element into the situation. Right before the game starts, if im still on the field, i look around, and i just take a deep breath because it is so exciting and magical, not knowing what the season holds holds is very, very exciting. It was fastpaced, stressful, but the good kind of stressful, high energy. There was a crowd to entertain, it was overwhelming in a good way, and i really, really enjoyed it. I continued working for the grizzlies for the 20122013 season, and out of happenstance, the same job opened up for the San Francisco giants. I applied, not knowing if i would get it, but i would kick myself if i didnt apply. I was so nervous, i never lived anywhere outside of fridays know, andfridays fresno, and i got an interview. And then, i got a second interview, and i got more nervous because know the thought of leaving fresno and my family and friends was scary, but this opportunity was on the other side. But i had to try, and lo and behold, i got the job, and my first day was january 14, 2014. Every game day was a puzzle, and i have to figure out how to put the pieces together. I have two features that are 30 seconds long or a minute and a 30 feature. Its fun to put that altogetl r together and then lay that out in a way that is entertaining for the fans. A lucky seat there and there, and then, some lucky games that include players. And then ill talk to lucille, can you take the shirt gun to the bleachers. I just organize it from top to bottom, and its just fun for me. Something, we dont know how its going to go, and it can be a huge hit, but youve got to try it. Or if it fails, you just wont do it again. Or you tweak it. When that all pans out, you go oh, we did that. We did that as a team. I have a great team. We all gel well together. It keeps the show going. The fans are here to see the teams, but also to be entertained, and thats our job. I have wonderful female role models that i look up to here at the giants, and theyve been great mentors for me, so i aspire to be like them one day. Renelle is the best. Shes all about women in the workforce, shes always in our corner. [applause] i enjoy how progressive the giants are. We have had the longer running until they secure day. Weve been doing lgbt night longer than most teams. I enjoy that i work for an organization who supports that and is all inclusive. That means a lot to me, and i wouldnt have it any other way. I wasnt sure i was going to get this job, but i went for it, and i got it, and my first season, we won a world series even if we hadnt have won or gone all the way, i still would have learned. Ive grown more in the past four years professionally than i think ive grown in my entire adult life, so its been eye opening and a wonderful learning shop and dine in the 49 promotes local businesses and challenges residents to do their shopping and dining within the 49 square miles of San Francisco. By supporting local Services Within our neighborhoods, we help San Francisco remain unique, successful, and vibrant. So where will you shop and dine in the 49 . My name is ray behr. I am the owner of chief plus. Its a destination Specialty Foods store, and its also a Corner Grocery store, as well. We call it cheese plus because theres a lot of additions in addition to cheese here. From fresh flowers, to wine, past a, chocolate, our dining area and espresso bar. You can have a casual meeting if you want to. Its a Real Community gathering place. What makes little polk unique, i think, first of all, its a great pedestrian street. Theres people out and about all day, meeting this neighbor and coming out and supporting the businesses. The businesses here are almost all exclusively independent owned small businesses. It harkens back to supporting local. Polk street doesnt look like anywhere u. S. A. It has its own businesses and personality. We have Clothing Stores to gallerys, to personal service stores, where you can get your hsus repaired, luggage repaired. Theres a music studio across the street. Its raily a diverse and unique offering on this really great street. I think san franciscans should shop local as much as they can because they can discover things that they may not be familiar with. Again, the marketplace is changing, and, you know, you look at a screen, and you click a mouse, and you order something, and it shows up, but to have a tangible experience, to be able to come in to taste things, to see things, to smell things, all those things, its very important that you do so. As latinos we are unified in some ways and incredibly diverse in others and this exhibit really is an exploration of nuance in how we present those ideas. Our debts are not for sale. A piece about sanctuary and how his whole family served in the army and its a long Family Tradition and these people that look at us as foreigners, we have been here and we are part of america, you know, and we had to reinforce that. I have been cure rating here for about 18 year.