Friends of Wonder Valley

1. Raise funds to make the Wonder Valley Community Center as useful to the community of Wonder Valley as possible.
2. Maintain a fund that covers the costs of qualified meetings and events for those who cannot afford to pay the fees or purchase insurance. A qualified meeting or event is open to the public, duly noticed, non-sectarian, not aligned with a political party, cause, or candidate, and should support one or more goals of the WVCC.
3. Maintain current USDA and Salvation Army food programs, and start and maintain others.
4. Promote and support the creation of health programs, including mental health programs that address suicide.
5. Showcase area artists, musicians, writers, and academics.
6. Engage in partnerships outside of Wonder Valley that raise our profile and benefit the community.
7. Preserve the history of the area, and safeguard the identity of Wonder Valley.

We meet regularly to review and plan programming, outreach, promotion, and capacity building.

Over the years we have built strong relationships with locla charitable and governmental organizations, creating mutually beneficial programs. We also have a very strong volunteer program with a core of dedicated volunteers who help us run our events and food distributions. This year we plan on implementing an advisory board which will help us build our capacity.

Last year we strengthened partnerships with our Third District County Supervisor's Office, Community Action Partnership, the Twentynine Palms Food Bank, the Salvation Army, the Morongo Basin Healthcare District, and Adult and Aging Services. We also partnered with the Simi Dabah foundation and were able to install a sculpture at the Wonder Valley Community Center, which is a fulfillment of our public art goal. Three of our board members took Mental Health First Aid Training. We were able to expand our programming to include local artists and writers.

This year we plan to implement an advisory council bringing in more and diverse voices, to make and help implement recommendations. We plan to expand our partnerships, bringing in more food resourses. We plan to work with County Government to start the process of creating a Public Arts Policy that will allow us to highlight our own local artists. In addition, we are in the process of leasing property that will allow us to expand our programming and display local art.