It is the holiday season so time to get together with your friends and colleagues in EDA, IP and semiconductor at the third annual event raising money for Court Appointed Special Advocates (CASA) (www.casaofsantacruz.org). This is the third event that Heart of Technology has worked with CASA. CASA has local organizations and in this case we are working with their Santa Cruz organization.
The event is on Saturday December 6th from noon to 5pm at Doc Auto in Santa Cruz, which is at 908 Ocean Street. There will be a big tent so that the event can take place rain or shine. As always there will be live music, food, drink, silent auctions and raffle drawings. It promises to be a fun afternoon. Cost is just $10 or donate a $10 gift card.
Of and if you are wondering why the event is taking place at an auto shop, there is an EDA connection. Doc Auto is owned by Ken Potts family. He worked for me at Compass way back when and currently is at Cadence.
Santa Cruz is economically very different from San Jose. The statewide median household income is $59,540. The median income for a household in San Jose was $77,000, which is well above median for a Santa Cruz household in the city was $50,605. Many households are having a difficult making it and families are suffering. CASA is about taking care of families going through difficult times. This is especially true around the holidays.
A little more about CASA: Children with a CASA Advocate are…
- More stable while in foster care;
- Receive more of the physical and emotional resources they need to heal;
- Better able to succeed in school;
- Less likely to return to the system.
- Children with a CASA Advocate are more likely to grow into healthy adults who can break the cycle of abuse and neglect.
This holidays the focus for the event will be teenagers. Often the teenagers are left out. CASA will use proceeds to purchase gift cards for example. These gift cards are very useful by teenagers who want to fit in.
I will be there, hope to see you too.
Court Appointed Special Advocates of Santa Cruz County
As many as 600 local children each year live in the Santa Cruz County dependency system because of parental abuse or neglect. Each day they face uncertainty and trauma, their lives a sea of ever-changing professionals who –although well-meaning- are nonetheless strangers; police, social workers, foster parents, therapists, judges, lawyers and many others. This is where CASA steps in. For more than 200 of these children each year, one person is consistently there; a caring person whose focus is solely on them, a person whose reassuring presence does not change; the child’s volunteer CASA Advocate. Read more.
More articles by Paul McLellan…
Real men have fabs!