CITY SPOTLIGHT
Person of the Month for May:
Joe "Peppy" Sciarra

Joe "Peppy" Sciarra is the poster boy for heart health and getting Alhambra residents involved in raising money for the Heart Institute at Children’s Hospital of Los Angeles. Peppy had his own eye-opening experience with heart health when he had chest pains and an angioplasty in 1996. He says he recognized the signs of his heart trouble after a presentation at an Alhambra Rotary Club meeting. As a result, he started supporting the Heart Institute which birthed the Alhambra Heart Walk with support from the Alhambra Rotary Club members. A community event for many years, this year’s Heart Walk was a tremendous success with over $7,000 raised for the children’s hospital. In speaking with Peppy and his wife, Lucille, after a recent Rotary meeting, it is clear that he is touched by how the Children’s Hospital serves patients without regard to their ability to pay for medical services. He is committed to raising money for this worthy cause through the Annual Heart Walk and getting community members motivated to care for their own and their families’ heart health. Peppy credits the Rotary club and a team of people for the success of the Heart Walk, not wanting to take the credit for the event himself and because he champions a spirit of community ownership and heart health awareness on behalf of all of Alhambra, Peppy is our City Spotlight Person of the month. He exemplifies our motto at Kingdom Causes of inspiring, connecting and mobilizing people for community transformation.

AmeriCorps - our new partner
by Dawn Miller

I attended the AmeriCorps orientation on Monday May 5th through Friday May 9th in Rancho Palos Verdes, CA as a part of Kingdom Causes Alhambra's new partnership with AmeriCorps. Other branches of Kingdom Causes in Long Beach and elsewhere have been partnered with AmeriCorps in their community development efforts for a few years now. With this new partnership, Alhambra can utilize our support from the CRWRC (Christian Reformed World Relief Committee) and AmeriCorps to target specific neighborhoods for community development.

Our target neighborhood will include the downtown core, including the Police Dept, City Hall, the Alhambra municipal courts, Alhambra high school and the new city library, which is still under construction. It will also include a portion of the neighborhood south of the downtown core and focus on getting these residents connected with the city agencies and services whose purpose is to serve them.

The Americorps training was an overview and introduction to the program for participants (such as myself!) for the first two days and then 1st year participants went through Asset-Based Community Development (ABCD) training. This kind of community development focuses on the assets already existent in a community and uses community mobilizers to connect people and catalyze the use of those assets. Another way to describe this is strengths-based community development. Similar to the StrengthsFinder test, which focuses on leaders' strengths and how to capitalize on them, ABCD focuses on the assets the community already has and looks to community organizers to help connect people with those assets and get people collaborating to make a better community.

From Garfield Ave.(East) to 4th St. (West) and Woodward Ave.(North) to Misson Rd. (South) - this is our target neighborhood.

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The April 28th (2008) City Council Meeting at City Hall in Alhambra was an opportunity for community members to voice their concerns over a number of issues impacting the community. The meeting kicked off with about 60 members of the Asian Youth Center and Friends of Clean Air sharing with the Council various statistics and commentary about the negative health effects of secondhand smoke and arguing for a ban on smoking in Alhambra city parks. There were also a number of other issues discussed including the relocation of a neighborhood church, the installation of new stop signs, work on the Alhambra Public Library and how city funds are allocated for work in the city. All of these issues impact all who reside and work in Alhambra.

By attending City Council meetings you get a front row seat to see how decisions are made, ordinances put into place and how you as a resident of Alhambra can be a part of the process. It’s clear the Council is genuinely interested in hearing from the public on a variety of matters. However, there were few members of the faith community there to weigh in on these topics of concern. We can make an impact in our city by getting involved in these meetings, as citizens raise issues and the City Council responds to the challenges facing our city. City Council meetings are on alternating Monday nights from 7-9 PM in the Council Chambers at City Hall. They are open to the public and you may address the Council directly by submitting a blue card during the open session of the meeting. You will be called on and you have five minutes to present your remarks.

I encourage you to attend one of these meetings. It really opened my eyes to many things going on in our city that we can be praying for and getting involved with. It’s also a reminder of how our democratic political process needs the input of all of its citizens, especially those committed to seeing God's Shalom come to our city.

By Dawn Miller
DawnM@kingdomcauses.org