Ceres Community Project Announces Major State Award
CERES RECEIVES MAJOR GRANT TOWARDS NEW CENTER, RESILIENCE ACTIVITIES
Sonoma County-based Ceres Community Project has received $4.8 million through the California Strategic Growth Council’s Community Resilience Center (CRC) Implementation Grant program. Grant funds will support the completion of The Center for Food, Youth & Community in southwest Santa Rosa. The highly competitive program awarded funding to just nine projects across the state.
CRC awards aim to support the development of community resilience centers in low-income neighborhoods to improve emergency preparedness and serve as places of support during disasters. The facilities are meant to be energy efficient and the organizations who operate them should offer year-round community resilience programming. In a recent city-led community engagement effort, a community resilience center emerged as one of the most needed assets in southwest Santa Rosa.
The 19,611 square foot Center for Food, Youth & Community will enable Ceres Community Project to quadruple access to 100% organic medically tailored meals for those living with serious, chronic and complex illness throughout the North Bay, expand nutrition and culinary education programs for the community, empower teens with job, life and leadership skills, and provide year-round preparedness and resilience support for southwest Santa Rosa.
The Center will be 100% electric with 60% coverage from onsite solar and a microgrid that will enable the organization to operate for up to 12 days during power outages. Along with reducing per meal energy use by 65% and carbon output by 81%, this is critical for multiple reasons. Ceres Community Project is contracted to provide meals to county-operated shelters during disasters; hundreds of community members rely on the organization for meals; and the Center will serve as a refuge for community members during power shut offs and emergencies.
Ceres will use $3 million of the Community Resilience Center Implementation Grant towards completion of the $22 million capital project to build the Center. The remining funds will support the development and implementation of year-round preparedness and resilience support for the neighborhood, and a detailed activation plan to provide services during emergencies. This brings Ceres’ capital campaign to 85% of funding committed. A Community Giving campaign is currently underway with a $1,000,000 match available for funds donated by June 30 thanks to Redwood Credit Union, the Ginnie & Peter Haas Jr Fund and an anonymous donor.
About Ceres Community Project: Founded in 2007, Ceres Community Project is a nonprofit organization with an integrated model which provides youth development plus 220,000 medically tailored meals annually for local families facing a chronic or acute health challenge. Based in Sebastopol, Ceres has two commercial kitchens and two gardens serving Sonoma and Marin counties, has trained 13 communities across the country and in Denmark to replicate their model, and is actively engaged in policy work at the state and federal level to integrate medically tailored food interventions into health care as a fully reimbursable benefit. Ceres plans a new regional home in southwest Santa Rosa, The Center for Food, Youth & Community, to support their continued impact growth. The Center is slated to open by the end of 2025.
