We asked members of the community how their organizations help the community. We’ve shared some of the responses below.

Nirit Wigdor | Founder and Chief Eater

SanDiegoEats gives the opportunity for local small businesses to have exposure to a large audience in San Diego. Aside from running expensive digital ads or renting billboards, restaurants don’t get a lot of chances to reach a wide audience. The audience we’ve built is made up of those that have expressed interest in local restaurants. They are following our page because they want to know the best places to eat and constantly look for new places to try. The goal of our page is to highlight local businesses and their unique offerings regardless of their size, cuisine, or neighborhood. Read more>>

Ferhat Ay | Genome Scientist

I am interested in epigenetics. By definition, epigenetics is anything beyond the sequence of the four letters in DNA that controls the activity of genes. That would be chemical modifications of DNA and proteins intimately associated with DNA, and in my case specifically, how the DNA is folded in the nucleus a.k.a. the HQ of a cell. If you stretched out the DNA from all of your body’s cells and lined it up end-to-end, it would cover the distance between the earth and sun a few hundred times. While this is certainly an intriguing tidbit of information, it goes to show how much information needs to be compacted into a tiny cell. Read more>>

Shane O’Garro | Senior Pastor

The first thing you should know is that we are a church, it’s in our DNA to help our community. When we first started the church, we would clean up the beaches or volunteer in the food bank. But as we did more in the community, we decided to not just help out other organizations, but also create our own thing. In November of 2020, we created our outreach arm titled, For I Was…. Through this program of the church we started by giving away $25 grocery gift cards to 5 families in San Diego county. In the month of June that $25 was boosted by a generous donor to $100 grocery gift card. In total, we have given over $1,100 worth of grocery gift cards to families. In September 2021, we hosted our first food distribution in the Mira Mesa area. We ended up feeding about 60 families in San Diego. Read more>>

Nina Camille | Business Owner, Coach, Yoga Teacher

My business, Experience Freedom, has a major community and global impact. A majority of the work we do is about deeper self-discovery, healing trauma, and helping people live a life that feels truly authentic and fulfilling. But because we do this in groups with men and women, both online and at our retreats in person, the people who graduate from Experience Freedom re-enter the world with more compassion, patience, understanding and intimacy, and they share it. We create a micro-cosm of what the world looks like and learn to relate more deeply to one another in a deep, safe and platonic way. When that happens, it changes the way we relate to the world around us, outside the program. People who are freed from their trauma are more generous and present, and those are often the people who go out into the world and take risks in order to make it a better, more loving and safe places for all beings everywhere. When we change within, the way we behave and contribute to the world around us changes, too. Read more>>