We are delighted to announce that our $25.8 million Building on Success capital campaign closed early this month, nine years after it began. Raise a glass to all those involved in this massive, multi-year endeavor! We are deeply grateful to CII’s Board of Trustees, private individuals, foundations, and our beloved CII support groups who all contributed to the campaign:

Susan C. and Stephen E. Adamson The Ahmanson Foundation Raúl Alvarado Annenberg Foundation Ballmer Group Catherine and Robert Beyer Blossom Trustman Living Trust The C.H.I.P.S. California Community Foundation The Capital Group Companies Charitable Foundation Carolina Herrera Adam and Allison Checchi Gabriel and Christine Chiu The Colleagues Mary Collins The Carl & Roberta Deutsch Foundation Chuck and Lauren Diamond The Eisner Foundation Hugh Evans The Fletcher Jones Foundation Stephanie Fox The Fran & Ray Stark Foundation Tom Gores The Gores Foundation Ahmad and Haleh Gramian The Harold McAlister Charitable Foundation

Marcia Wilson Hobbs Daryn McDonald Horton Johnny Carson Foundation Justin Dart Family Foundation Sally and Paul R. Kanin W. M. Keck Foundation Bridget Gless Keller and Paul Keller K. John Lee Leonetti O’Connell Family Foundation Les Amies Los Angeles Galaxy Foundation Mari and Patrick McAlister Meredith Corporations The Chris and Dick Newman Family The Otis Booth Foundation Steven H. Pokress The Ralph M. Parsons Foundation David and Barbara Rognlien The Rose Hills Foundation Todd and Jacqueline Rosen S. Mark Taper Foundation Marna and Rockwell Schnabel Judith K. Sherven and James Sniechowski SoCal Office Technologies Suzanne Marx and Dr. Gary Tearston Barbara Hale Thornhill Kathleen M. Vanderziel Weingart Foundation

Donations above reflect gifts of $2,500+.

It’s hard to believe it’s been a year since COVID-19 was declared a pandemic and our staff transitioned to working from home and providing so many services remotely. Our lives are forever changed by what we have experienced, and our hearts are with those who have suffered and experienced loss this past year.

Throughout it all, we have come together as an agency in remarkable ways and prioritized serving our families above all else.

Between mid-March 2020 and mid-March 2021:

We distributed a tremendous amount of PPE to keep ourselves and CII families safe:

• 18,440 face masks
• 47,184 ounces of hand sanitizer
• 192,600 individual disinfecting wipes
• 58,900 rubber gloves
• 5,110 face shields

• Our dedicated Mailroom Coordinator Oscar Tirado-Serrano put 12,000 miles on his CII van, delivering equipment and essential supplies to staff, clients and partners.
• On the flip side, as a group we drove about 1.1 million fewer miles for work than we did a year ago, reducing emissions significantly.
• Our 300 teachers, substitute teachers and home visitors, along with a large group of in-classroom parent volunteers, transformed CII preschools serving 2,200 children across nearly 30 locations to virtual classrooms overnight as Los Angeles shut down in March. We then transitioned back to safely re-open 13  preschool classrooms, thoroughly training staff on the new safety protocols. Next month, we’ll open seven more preschool classrooms, four toddler classrooms and one infant classroom.

• We distributed more than $1.7 million in assistance and supplies to CII families, which included gift cards for food, rent assistance, and in-kind donations of diapers, formula and clothing.

• We were awarded 57  grants totaling $22.15 million, including $1.4 million in COVID-19 relief.
• We raised $511,220 at three virtual fundraising events, with 473  households attending.

• We achieved our $25.8 million capital campaign goal for our new campus in Watts!

The new Watts campus grew from this

to this

• While many companies were forced to pause on recruiting or downsize, we hired 264 staff members.
• We gathered for 11  Virtual Town Hall staff meetings.
• 10,518 attendees participated in 293 trainings held during the pandemic, all but 5 of which were virtual. This includes teacher and Office of Equity trainings, as well as those offered to our community partners.
• And finally… collectively, we spent 4,245,869 minutes on Zoom! And these were just the Zoom meetings initiated on CII accounts. Imagine how many more minutes we spent on Zoom meetings initiated by outside groups, not to mention on MS Teams meetings!

With mass vaccine distribution underway and COVID-19 cases subsiding, there’s a light at the end of this very dark tunnel. We have a lot of work to do but are hopeful that this next year will be brighter. Remember to stay the course and continue to follow COVID-19 safety guidelines.

Several staff members who were vaccinated shared their experiences with the rest of us at our February Virtual Town Hall. This special meeting focused on the vaccine – we wanted to answer staff questions and clear up confusion and misconceptions. First, we showed this video produced by Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health explaining how the vaccine works. Then two doctors from Cedars-Sinai answered staff questions: Dr. Karen Youmbi, Associate Director of the Outpatient Pharmacies, and Dr. Rachel Zabner, who is board-certified in infectious diseases.

       

This Q&A was yet another example of our multi-faceted partnership with Cedars. Cedars has given CII nearly half a million dollars over the last four years, funding everything from mental health services, groceries and Family Flex Funds for parents of children enrolled in our programs to training for CII’s Early Childhood Education staff, Salesforce implementation, our web-based care coordination system, and our Office of Equity. We all learned a lot, and we hope to host something similar for CII families soon.

Minnie Barton was the first woman probation officer in Los Angeles and a fierce advocate of women and children in need. In 1906, she founded Children’s Institute – then called The Big Sister League.

Having moved to LA with her husband in 1905, she was struck by the obstacles facing indigent women who were getting left behind as the city grew. She started volunteering with LAPD, eventually becoming Chief Woman Probation and Parole Officer. She helped women who were discharged from jail to find work, sometimes keeping them in her own home until they had made other arrangements. She appealed to City Council to help; when denied, she founded The Big Sister League, expanding to help women who had come to the city looking for opportunity and had run out of money.

Ultimately, she also operated two homes, the Minnie Barton Home, a halfway in West Adams and the Bide-A-Sweet Home in Boyle Heights for unmarried pregnant women. Later in her life, she established a Valley camp for older women on her private property in what is now Sunland.

Minnie was highly sought-after as a speaker to women’s clubs and community groups. She had three sons of her own and died in 1946. The Big Sister League was renamed Children’s Institute when it moved to New Hampshire Ave in 1980.

A plaque in the Fern Dell picnic area in Griffith Park commemorates Minnie’s life of service. Read more about CII’s remarkable founder here and here.

On February 22, chef, author and CII Trustee Lisa Baker Morgan launched our three-part 2021 Dinner in Paris cooking series, back for an encore after her successful October class. Chef Lisa guided nearly 100 participants through making a delicious cheese soufflé and winter greens citrus salad, teaching culinary tips and tricks along the way with her trademark humor and fun. She put the virtual attendees at ease in creating this potentially intimidating dish and even busted the myth that stomping by your oven deflates your soufflé.

Amelia Ceja and Ceja Vineyards provided Chardonnay and Pinot Noir to complement the meal, and one lucky participant received a MacKenzie-Childs 3-qt. sauté pan generously donated by our event sponsor, Neiman Marcus.

The February class raised $23,000 for CII’s programs. Our next two classes are Monday, April 19 (fish and spring vegetables) and Monday, May 17 (refreshing summer favorites). Both are held 5:00-6:30pm PST via Zoom. Sign up here.

Many thanks to Chef Lisa for generously hosting these classes and to our event sponsors: Sommelier level – Dr. Jennifer Linehan Kutrieh and Tarek Kutrieh, Neiman Marcus; and Friend of CII level – The Kallick Family, Katie and Rick Lewis, Carey and Tim Romer, Martine Singer.