In the wake of the closure earlier this year of the Lake County Community Action Agency, North Coast Opportunities, based in Ukiah, picked up the community action agency mantle for Lake County effective July 1, according to Executive Director Wes Winter.
NCO, incorporated in 1968, offers services in seven counties – Sonoma, Del Norte, Humboldt, Napa, Solano, Lake and Mendocino – Winter said.
Winter said NCO also serves as the community action agency for Mendocino County, and plans to use its program there as a model as it expands more into Lake, Winter said.
NCO employs 250 people, serves 8,000 children, families, caregivers and care providers, and has contract totaling $17 million annually.
The bulk of its activities take place in Mendocino and Lake. During the last several years, Winter said NCO spent $6 million to $7 million annually in Lake.
For many years NCO has offered numerous services in Lake County, such as the Head Start Child Development Program, foster grandparent and senior companion programs, Redwood Caregiver Resource Center, Rural Communities Child Care and a nonprofit resource center.
NCO’s 10-member board of directors is half from Mendocino County, half from Lake, Winter said. Lake County residents on the board include Nick Bennett, Jo Bennett, Susan Jen, Louise Talley and Carolyn Ruttan.
The California Department of Community Services and Development distributed to NCO a $250,000 federal grant to go toward duties for the agency, which every community has. Winter said they plan to leverage that money as they’ve done in Mendocino County in order to raise more funds for services.
But Winter and Patty Bruder, NCO’s director of community action, emphasize that NCO’s expanded presence in Lake County is not a reboot of the previous community action agency.
As such, they are not going to offer every service that the Lake County Community Action Agency did, pointing out that overreaching helped lead to the previous action agency’s collapse. Many of those other services, they added, were picked up by other local nonprofits, school districts and agencies.
Instead, NCO will focus primarily on food- and volunteer-related services, with a view toward branching out into other areas over time as more resources become available, Winter said.
He said the new services should be fully rolled out by this coming January. They will have two and a half full-time employees devoted to their efforts once they finish a new recruitment for a local coordinator.
Bruder said food is a critical issue, one that kept “bubbling to the top” in meetings the nonprofit held with community members to gauge need.
She said NCO has started a Clearlake food bank, which now is sharing space in a Lake Family Resource Center. They hope to locate in a city of Clearlake-owned building at 4700 Golf Ave. for $1 a year lease in exchange for repairing and improving the building.
NCO is part of a multicounty food hub, and Bruder said the organization is purchasing fresh fruit and vegetables from local farmers, and working with the Lake County Community Co-op and Food Roundtable.
Lou Denny, who previously worked with the Lake County Community Action Agency, was hired to work part-time with NCO’s food program, Bruder said.
Bruder said Sutter Lakeside Hospital is pitching in to help NCO’s food program with a holiday food drive, and plans for future drives.
NCO has received a warm welcome, from the Board of Supervisors and county administration, to the Clearlake City Council and the wider community, said Winter.
“I’ve found the spirit of people here amazing,” added Bruder.
Regarding volunteerism, Winter said they are offering training and recruitment services to assist local nonprofits, many of which have had to lay off staff during the economic downturn.
For the volunteers who aren’t employed, Bruder said the program helps them keep their employment skills strong.
She said they want to encourage everyone to give back in some way or another, no matter how small.
Other plans include offering low-income families assistance in claiming earned income tax credit in 2012, Bruder said.
NCO also looks forward to working more with Lake Family Resource Center, with which they already have partnered on some grant applications, Bruder said.
“The amount of things we can do together is probably endless,” she said.
Winter offered the community the assurance that the 42-year-old NCO is “an old and stable organization” with a track record of service and fiscal soundness.
“They’ll be able to count on us,” he said.
E-mail Elizabeth Larson at
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