Meet Vanessa Tostado, Ashley Davis and Margarita Tenisi, & Rose Valencia of East Palo Alto. Self-dubbed the “EPA Chica Squad,” three Eastside Prep sophomores and one Sequoia High School freshman competed in the Technovation Challenge, a global competition that uses online curriculum to guide teams of middle school and high school girls through the process of developing mobile-phone application.
When a six-alarm fire broke out in Redwood City early Sunday morning, the emergency response was fast and thorough. With nearly 100 people left homeless, that response soon transformed into an ongoing support system that gathered resources from multiple sources...
Imagine how you would feel if you and your family lost everything in a fire and you couldn’t find a new place to live? Now imagine your home was one of the very few affordable places to live in one of the most expensive areas of the country...We are now asking San Mateo County apartment building owners for help. We ask that you consider offering one vacant unit in your building to a fire victim. We realize this is a unique request; these people have lost their housing because of a fire and not through any fault of their own. For those people with vacant in-law units, motels with living units and home-share opportunities: • We’re not asking that the unit be free — we’re asking that it be affordable; • We’re not asking that it be forever — we’re asking that it be for as long as the tenant wants to call it home; • We’re not asking for multiple units — we’re asking for a single unit. If enough housing rental units aren’t found in the next couple of weeks for these people, the 80 fire victims will be forced to look for housing in places like Modesto, Fresno or Galt — communities that are not known, not “home.” Can’t we do better as a community? Can’t we find a way to accommodate the victims of this tragedy?