La Familia Sana, a nonprofit located in Cloverdale, is growing its partnership with Corazón Healdsburg in hopes of bringing more resources to the area. In the past, both organizations have helped one another when it comes to helping families — whether it was with housing supplies, food or COVID-19 tests, a partnership was already there.
“As we continue to grow, we were still leaning on them. But we were also building up our own resources, and through a lot of that was guidance through Corazón,” La Familia Sana Executive Director Jade Weymouth said.
Corazón’s CEO Glaydon de Freitas told Weymouth how it was possible to bring more services to Cloverdale.
“Within a week or two, we had set up a meeting. Then we started to talk about ‘Okay, so how do we partner in a more meaningful and deeper impacted way?’ … How do we start becoming more proactive?” Weymouth said.
As part of the partnership, Corazón Healdsburg will be doing some of their work out of La Familia Sana’s office in downtown Cloverdale, located at 233 N. Cloverdale Boulevard.
The nonprofits have discussed bringing financial literacy to Cloverdale, including education around childhood savings accounts. Because Corazón has Cloverdale clients, it is easier for them to have a place to attend which does not require driving as much. The first financial literacy class was held on March 18 in Cloverdale.
Besides La Familia Sana’s offices being a resource for Corazón, the organizations talked about doing a knowledge exchange.
“La Familia Sana is really good at outreach. In reaching out directly to the community and walking up the doors and building that trust in the community. Corazón is really good at client case management and how to refer their clients out and keep them in and make sure that the internal structure of the organization is always supporting the needs of their community,” Weymouth said.
“I think there’s room there to learn from each other. Maybe this is where we’re going to head or maybe this is how we can partner deeper, or maybe this is actually the true need of the community. But we don’t know until we get there,” Weymouth said.
Another idea is for Corazón to do outreach at the Cloverdale Food Pantry.
“We’re so underserved up here that if we’re not stepping on each other, if we’re not communicating and helping each other, you’re just going to be siloed. That means your work is siloed and that means the community you’re serving is siloed,” she said.
How the partnership between the two will unfold is uncertain, but the first step for a deeper collaboration has begun. The rest will come.
“Both our organizations are anchored in the community’s needs and aspirations. We serve the same community, but we don’t want to duplicate efforts or waste scarce resources. Working together we can maximize the strengths of each organization and our impact in Cloverdale,” De Freitas said.
