North County Lifeline extends a large helping hand during the pandemic
North County Lifeline empowers youth and families to change their own stories by providing the support needed to overcome job loss, homelessness, and trauma – to become self-reliant. In FY21, Lifeline provided counseling, housing, and financial assistance to 433 clients – an increase of 45% over the prior year. Lifeline’s Housing & Self-Sufficiency Programs support young adults exiting the foster care system, homeless youth, clients recently incarcerated, and families facing poverty. During the pandemic, households received emergency assistance for basic needs such as food, shelter, transportation, clothing, and utility bill assistance. More than 50% of clients were below the Federal Poverty Level, and many were without stable housing. More than 300 adults and children received assistance to prevent homelessness.
In FY21, Lifeline helped 884 youth, adults, and families reframe their stories by providing mental health services and education, including suicide prevention and intervention, substance abuse services, and counseling. Lifeline’s clinically based programs identify and treat mental health needs across the community. Mental health, when left untreated, often coincides with rates of imprisonment, homelessness, suicide, and substance abuse. Lifeline continues to debunk mental health stigmas through community education, removing barriers to services, and expanding clinical mental health services.
Leichtag Foundations provides annual grants for general operating support.
Stacie and Jeff Cook understand commitment. They live it.
Black, Jewish and Queer. These three identities weave the fabric of who I am, but it took a long time to believe that they could exist together.
Lee and Toni Leichtag established the Leichtag Foundation in 1991 following the sale of their business. Lee and Toni were lifelong entrepreneurs with a passion for innovation and for supporting talent. They believed that only with big risk comes big reward. Both born to families in poverty, Toni to a single mother, they strongly believed in helping those most in need and most vulnerable in our community. While they supported many causes, their strongest support was for young children and the elderly, two demographics who particularly lack voice in our society.
Lifelong Baltimoreans, Rabbi George and Alison Wielechowski and their sons, 11-year-old Lennon and 9-year-old Gideon, are more than pursuing the good life in Southern California. Having moved to San Diego more than three years ago, they are fulfilling a lifelong dream.
You would think that as the executive director of San Diego LGBT Pride, Fernando Zweifach López Jr., who uses the pronoun they, has done all the coming out they possibly can. A queer, non-binary individual who has worked for many years on civil rights issues, López also speaks openly and often about their father’s family, Mexican-American migrant workers who tilled the fields of rural California.