Out & About January 2024
Find out what is happening in Sacramento during the month of January!
Better To Give
“If there’s any legacy I’d like to leave in my nonprofit life, it would be that I showed up, I did the work and made it as fun as possible,” John Frisch says. “I always tried to bring positive energy and humor to these organizations so it wouldn’t seem like work. People are working hard enough. Making it fun is the key.”
Frisch speaks from experience. He’s been a member of The Salvation Army Advisory Board for 27 years. He served as past chair and oversaw the organization’s successful $7.4 million capital campaign.
Gifts From The Heart
Santa’s workshop has been in full swing since November, but it’s not manned by elves. It’s run by volunteers and administrators of the county’s Gifts from the Heart program.
Gifts from the Heart celebrates 35 years this season of bringing Christmas joy to children ages 0 to 18, seniors and disabled adults.
Since 1988, the program has annually provided gifts to more than 3,000 clients served by the Department of Child, Family and Adult Services thanks to the generosity of more than 100 community partners.
Reduction Formula
You probably know the environmental three Rs: Reduce, Reuse, Recycle.
Recycling is most familiar, but reducing has the biggest impact. Alex Aruj is determined to help Sacramentans learn how.
“I watched the documentary ‘The Story of Plastic’ and I was shocked and outraged at the environmental degradation going on through the lens of the plastic waste crisis,” says Aruj, a former Bay Area resident who moved to East Sacramento in 2020.
Multi-Track Artist
When Marjorie Methven landed in town to earn a teaching credential and master’s degree at Sacramento State, she had no idea she was returning to her roots.
“While doing research for my master’s thesis on visual self-narrative, I started to look into my own genealogical history,” Methven says. “It turns out that my great-great grandfather settled in Antioch and my great uncles worked for the railyard (in Sacramento) in different capacities at the turn of the 20th century. I didn’t know that before I moved here. It was quite serendipitous.”
Before the research, Sacramento was just a place on the map to Methven, who grew up in Minnesota and went to college in Wisconsin.
