Events

Thoreau Gallery:
Structure and the Meaning of Life

May 1 through June 5, 2009
Reception: Thursday, June 4, 5:00PM to 7:00PM

An art exhibition featuring ArtSeed Art-a-thon participants, ArtSeed artists, and students from Burnett Child Development Center, Sherman Elementary School, and ArtSeed’s Apprenticeship Program.

ArtSeed is a volunteer-based nonprofit public charity with a mission to inspire and empower all people to realize their full potential and embrace diverse communities. Their innovative and collaborative fine arts projects, exhibitions, classroom arts integration, and long-term artist/youth studio apprenticeships invite the young and/or disenfranchised to use the arts to broaden all of our horizons.

Brown Bag: Health at Every Size

Presenter: Connie Sobczak
Thursday, May 7, 12:30PM to 1:30PM
Pacific Room at Tides

Did you know that on average women spend 31 years of their life dieting? And that women who diet have higher rates of depression? Body Positive’s mission is to empower people of all shapes and sizes to connect to their internal wisdom, freeing them to live healthier, happier lives.

In 1996, Connie Sobczak and Elizabeth Scott, LCSW, founded The Body Positive because of their shared passion—to help women and girls cherish their bodies in order to lead healthier and more meaningful lives. Since then, The Body Positive has:

• Directly trained hundreds of youth leaders
• Assisted over 1,000 schools and communities in creating their own body image programs based on The Body Positive's youth leadership model
• Distributed the BodyTalk video series worldwide for viewing by more than a million children and teens
• Worked directly with hundreds of women to improve their relationship with their bodies

The Body Positive works in a variety of settings to cultivate “body positive” environments where people enjoy the benefits of joyful, sustainable self-care. Examples of The Body Positive’s clients include the Mental Health Association in Illinois, Kaiser Permanente, the University of California at Berkeley, Clif Bar, San Francisco Unified School District, and Girls, Inc.

Connie Sobczak, Co-Founder. Connie is a writer, poet, filmmaker, and mother. She uses these skills and her former struggles with eating and body image issues to shape The Body Positive's vision and creative projects. She created the BodyTalk video series and co-wrote the BodyAloud! guidebook based on her desire to create a world where children can grow up feeling beautiful, confident, and healthy in their unique bodies. Connie is a body image coach, and is writing a book to inspire people to move beyond body dissatisfaction into vibrant and creative lives.

Photography Exhibition: Faces of Prop 8

Photojournalist Craig Winsor
Opening reception: Wednesday, May 6, 5:00PM to 7:00PM
Corridor behind building 1016

On March 5, 2009 the California Supreme Court heard oral arguments on the validity of Proposition 8, which banned the once legal right for same-sex marriages in the state of California. The oral argument was televised in the San Francisco Civic Center and many people attended demonstrating their views on the proposition. 

Photographer Craig Winsor stood outside the courtroom photographing images expressing both sides of the debate.

Brown Bag: Leadership in Peacemaking

Presenter: Elad Vazana
Tuesday, May 19, 12:30PM to 1:30PM

As part of his visit to the U.S. this month, Elad Vazana will stop by the Thoreau Center to present at our Brown Bag Series.

Elad is a Jewish Israeli who served in the Israel Defense Force. He has taught and managed projects for Youth Leading Change; Sulha Peace Project, which unites thousands of Arabs and Jews; Gevim North - Mediaton Center; and Makom Balev, a shelter for at-risk youth. Most recently, Elad has gathered youth from Palestine and Israel for one-week desert journeys to build relationships and learn to identify with all humankind and earth. He was a strong force in the 2007 Palestinian-Jewish Family Peacemakers Camp and in the 2009 initiative to send needed supplies across the Gaza border to citizens in need following war. He speaks Hebrew, English, Spanish, and some Arabic and Portuguese. He defines himself as "a man with a calling...an initiator, a creator."

Read more about some of Elad’s recent work.

The Bike Challenge Has Begun!

Thoreau & Exploratorium (vs.) Lucas Digital Arts
Entire Month of May

For the entire month of May, cyclists at Thoreau Center and the Exploratorium have have teamed up to challenge Lucas Digital Arts to a bike off!

The gauntlet has officially been thrown down, so
visit the discussion post on Facebook to get the scoop on how to join a team and win prizes. Every rider (and every day pedaled) counts!

Special Feature

Thoreau Center Tenant in the Spotlight:
Tenant Interview with Tamara Nelson of InterSchola

About InterSchola: InterSchola helps K-12 public school districts, community colleges, and local public agencies manage the end of the fixed asset lifecycle and recoup maximum value from the sale of their surplus assets via an online auction format. 
 
InterSchola serves local education institutions.  While facing ongoing fiscal challenges, it becomes increasingly important for school districts to keep a close eye on their budget resource allocations. One way to supplement limited education budgets is to extract extra dollars from retired district assets through the public sale of these assets. Some examples of items auctioned through InterSchola include portable buildings, school buses, tractors, golf carts, food service equipment (Hobart mixers are a “hot” item), musical instruments, band uniforms, shop equipment, technology equipment, roof tiles, parking meters, and medical mannequins for nurse training. For a current list of auction items, see www.interschola.com.
 
In four plus years of operations, InterSchola has returned almost $3M to schools by selling their surplus goods, helping them save countless more dollars that were previously spent on labor, storage, and waste disposal costs.

How did InterSchola come about?
InterSchola™ is the brainchild of Melissa Rich. Melissa began her work in the education field at Intel Capital, where she recommended emerging education companies for investment. Later, she worked as an executive in the educational technology and textbook publishing industries, helping companies forge strong partnerships to serve the education industry. Intent on helping the nation’s struggling schools and curious about what schools do with their surplus assets, Melissa turned to some of her former school clients to ask the question – “What do you do with the stuff you no longer need?”

When did you hold your first auction?
After quickly learning that very few resources existed for schools to realize value from their valuable surplus items, InterSchola launched its first pilot auctions with five pioneering school/district clients in the San Francisco Bay Area in May 2004. These five clients sold assets that had been accumulating in their warehouses for more than two decades. The eBay marketplace proved the perfect market for the sale of these goods. Each one of these school clients received a large check in the mail from InterSchola. The results of InterSchola’s first auctions were better than anyone could have imagined.
Melissa and I, former colleagues from an educational technology company called Classroom Connect, reconnected in the middle of 2008.  I joined the company the next week on a very part time basis but within a matter of a few days I was involved full time!

Melissa and I enjoy putting their knowledge of the education industry to an entirely new use in an area that helps schools, the environment, and the community. 

What are your organization’s biggest challenges?
Our biggest challenge is in continuing to educate our clients that they remain a viable market for the sale of surplus items.  Many of our school district clients believe that they have “junk.”  We believe firmly the old adage that one person’s junk is another person’s treasure.  Without exception, our clients view surplus as a headache.  Our job is to convince them that surplus can be a huge opportunity – especially in this economy!
 
How do you see the organization evolving?

As a result of the economy, InterSchola is experiencing enormous demand for our services from school districts throughout California and across the country.  As a small bootstrapped organization, growth can be a challenge.   Nevertheless, we know there is a significant need for what we are doing.  In only four short years, InterSchola is already working with over 25 percent of the school districts in California. We’ve also recently launched our services on the East Coast, serving clients in New York State and Maryland.  We are working on expanding our team of hard working, mission-driven people to help build our business nationwide.  As a service organization, our people are our reputation.  And we treat our clients as partners, not as vendors. We have important work to do and we want to maximize our success on behalf of our clients.

 How do you like working in the Presidio?
InterSchola could not ask for a better home.  Our space in 1004A O’Reilly was at one time a family home for Medical Officers.  Throughout our work day and when Melissa, I, and other staff are at work late at night watching the end of our eBay auctions on behalf of our school district clients, we feel we are at home too! 

We would love to partner with other organizations in the Presidio and beyond who share our vision to help K-12 schools and local agencies stretch their budgets a bit further and to provide a green alternative to the premature disposal of surplus goods from these same organizations.