WHAT’S INSIDE

1. Wine Tasting Event
2. Summer Conference
3. Ventura County LMI Summit
4. Trivia Night

New GFSF wine-tasting fundraiser events in Ventura & Santa Barbara Counties

If you are local to Ventura or Santa Barbara Counties, we would love you to join us at one of our two wine-tasting events! Not only will we be led through a sampling of fine imported wines from PRP Wine International, there will also be a silent auction and a raffle at each event.

Charcuterie boards will provide a delicious accompaniment to the wines. Each event is limited to the first 25 people to sign up.

Registration is now live for the Thousand Oaks event on Saturday, June 17th, from 1:00 to 3:00 PM

The Santa Barbara event will take place in September. More details will be available as the date gets closer. We hope to see you there!

Get Focused Stay Focused Conference

On June 20 & 21, the GFSF nonprofit in collaboration with Academic Innovations, publisher of the career curriculum, will be hosting our first in-person summer conference since before the pandemic at UCSB.

Schools from across the US are invited to bring teams to attend different professional development institutes, which include strands for new and experienced teachers, counselors, and administrators. We are grateful that the GFSF nonprofit has received sponsorship funding from the Santa Ynez Band of Chumash Indians Foundation to send teams from three local schools to the event.

How can you aspire to a career if you don’t know that it exists?

On February 24th, a county-wide Labor Market Summit took place in collaboration with seven faculty members from Ventura County’s three community colleges. One of the services provided by the Get Focused, Stay Focused nonprofit is to convene guest speakers from local community colleges to present on their high-wage, high-demand programs to their partner teachers, counselors, and administrators in K12. Doing so allows them to share up-to-date information with students on exciting career pathways opportunities and options for low-cost training to enter those careers.

The college faculty provide Powerpoints that include program information and labor
market data such as salaries, annual openings, etc. that are available for educators to use after the event. After this summit, information and resources were sent to nearly 500 educators in Ventura County with information on 12 of the colleges’ programs. This particular event was supported by grants from the Limoneira Foundation, the Williams-Corbett Foundation, and the Henry W. Bull Foundation.

Annual Get Focused, Stay Focused Trivia “Fun-Raiser” Night

Our annual Trivia Night fundraiser was a great success back in November! For this event, we were joined by 90 participants in 18 teams, and nearly $6,000 was raised for the nonprofit in entry fees and matching donations.

A big thank you goes to Board member Linda Schwartz for coordinating the fun event and to all our donors for their support.