Kids on Foy Reynolds’ YMCA basketball teams learn more than sports skills. They learn life lessons.
“I coach by the Y’s core values: respect, responsibility, caring and honesty,” Reynolds says. “I start getting kids in second grade all the way through seventh, which is an important time in their life. They play hard and they win, but they earn it because they work hard. I bring out the best in a person. That’s my job.”
You’ll probably never meet anyone more passionate about music than Benjamin J. McClara.
The founder and artistic director of Sacramento Preparatory Music Academy, a community-based education program, gets choked up when he talks about music.
He shares that passion with hundreds of students and community musicians in academy lessons and performances.
“Our mission is to provide lifelong access to music education and a place where students can come and study music with professionals,” McClara says. “You don’t really get that in school.”
The academy offers private and group lessons at Midtown’s E. Claire Raley Studios for the Performing Arts in piano, guitar, ukulele, woodwinds and voice under McClara, Michael Dale and Anthony Tavianini.
If your organization needs public support, you need Edith Thacher.
The Natomas resident has decades of experience bringing people together. She’s been in the Peace Corps, a community development specialist working on women’s issues in Sudan, Niger, Mauritania and Singapore, and a project consultant for public agencies.
Now, Thacher is a citizen lobbyist for the Sacramento-Roseville chapter of the Citizens’ Climate Lobby, which she co-leads with Lisa Howard.
Find out what is happening in Sacramento during the month of April!
You’re working at Sacramento Theatre Company during tough times. Live theater audiences are declining. Budgets are tight. You wonder what the future holds.
The phone rings. It’s Stephanie J. Block, Tony Award-winning star of Broadway hits “Wicked,” “9 to 5,” “The Cher Show,” “Falsettos” and “Into the Woods.”
She wants to help.
Kristy Venrick-Mardon brings bunnies and goats from Only Sunshine Sanctuary, her Elverta animal rescue, to interact with students at Meristem. But it’s not just playtime.
It’s a way for Meristem’s young adults with autism and other neurodiversity to master new skills.
“The students learn how to interact calmly and not stress out the animals,” says Venrick-Mardon, who founded her animal sanctuary in 2018. “At first, every student wanted to touch every animal. Now, they’re more patient and check in with the animal to make sure it’s comfortable.”
Venrick-Mardon didn’t intend to start a sanctuary. When she bought her house 11 years ago, she just wanted it filled with animals.
