Community Partners

Palo Alto Family YMCA

With the help of the Palo Alto Family YMCA, DreamCatchers is expanding its program to a second site at Ventura, enabling us to serve more students in need across the Palo Alto community. Our new program site is scheduled to open in autumn of 2010.

The Palo Alto Family YMCA is committed to strengthening and enriching the development of youth, adults, families and communities. Health, fitness and wellness activities, aquatics, camp, youth and adult sports, teen and family programs, and volunteer opportunities are just some of the ways that you can get involved at the Palo Alto Family YMCA.

YMCA of Silicon Valley is a volunteer-led public charity that works collaboratively with community partners to improve the lives of children, adults, families, and the entire community. Our mission is to strengthen and enrich the development of individuals and families through quality programs and services that build a healthy spirit, mind, and body for all.

Integral to everything that we do are our core values of caring, honesty, respect and responsibility. Our association of YMCAs serves people of all backgrounds, ages, capabilities and income levels, providing financial assistance to those in need.

Encouraging, supporting and improving healthy living habits, among our members and throughout the community, are central to our purpose. Our work also focuses on youth development through a wide variety of programs such as child and after school care, teen activities, day and resident camps, swim lessons, organized sports, and parent-child adventures.

Palo Alto Unified School District

DreamCatchers receives student referrals directly from Palo Alto Unified School District (PAUSD) and its three middle schools. Working directly with PAUSD teachers, school counselors and administrators, DreamCatchers is able to provide more specialized and targeted help to the students it serves.

PAUSD serves approximately 10,000 students who live in most, but not all, of the City of Palo Alto, certain areas of Los Altos Hills, and Portola Valley, as well as the Stanford University campus. The District consists of twelve K - 5 elementary schools, three middle schools (grades 6 - 8) and two high schools (grades 9 - 12). In addition, the District currently operates a pre-school, Young Fives program, a self-supporting Adult School, the Hospital School at Stanford's Lucille Packard Children's Hospital, and Summer School.

Palo Alto Adult School

DreamCatchers operates its after-school tutoring program at the Palo Alto Adult School.

Palo Alto Adult School was established by the Palo Alto Unified School District (PAUSD) in 1921. The adult school offers a robust program and annually serves a student population of approximately 8000 students. The school is committed to excellence by providing a broad range of affordable, high quality education programs. Its goal is to meet the diverse lifelong learning needs of its community.

The adult school provides classes for English learners, parents, job seekers, travelers, hobbyists, and others who want to expand their skills. Whether you want to learn to cook, try your hand at something new or enhance your skills, let Palo Alto Adult School meet your lifelong learning needs.

Most of the school's instructors are credentialed. Credentialing involves having studied or worked with the subject matter being taught and obtaining education related to adult learning theory. Students are thus assured that their instructors have the skills to guide students appropriately.

English as a second language and citizenship classes are free and other classes have affordable prices, offering you excellent value for your time.

Palo Alto Housing Corporation

Palo Alto Housing Corporation (PAHC) first recognized the need for no-charge tutoring for underserved students in Palo Alto, many of whom live in subsidized housing provided by PAHC. DreamCatchers collaborates with PAHC to ensure that tutoring support is reaching families who are most in need.

Although the City of Palo Alto is a rich community in many ways, the high cost of housing creates a barrier to people of limited income. Many who currently work or have grown up in this community cannot afford to live here. This situation results in the need for low- and moderate-income households to seek housing elsewhere or to pay an unreasonable proportion of their incomes for housing. Thus, there is a great need for more affordable rental and ownership housing units so that overpayment is not such a burden. The availability of affordable housing is central to maintaining community character and diversity.

Palo Alto's community leaders recognized that the issue of affordable housing deserved attention. To address this concern, the City Council assisted in establishing the Palo Alto Housing Corporation in 1970 as a private non-profit agency.

PAHC's mission has always been to foster, develop, acquire, and manage low- and moderate- income housing in Palo Alto and the San Francisco Bay Area. Through its affiliated entities its activities involve administration of the City of Palo Alto's Below Market Rate (BMR) Program (PAHC Housing Services, LLC), development and/or acquisition of over 600 units of rental housing (Palo Alto Housing Corporation), management of the properties it owns (PAHC Management and Services Corporation) and general housing advocacy. Its properties are located in all geographical areas of Palo Alto.

City of Palo Alto's Family Resources

Family Resources helped collaborate to found DreamCatchers.

Family Resources engages the community to build on existing strengths and services to promote the well-being of its families and their children.

Family Resources is a community-based program conceived in response to changing social conditions that left families feeling isolated and with increasingly complex needs. Family Resources will help you find the resources and make the connections your family needs.

Family Resources works to raise the level of resource awareness in the community, a first prerequisite to service utilization, as well as building community relationships across all community constituents. In this way, accessibility and utilization will be made easier and more comfortable, improving and equalizing the opportunities for all families to utilize the wealth of services and resources available to them. In the process of accomplishing this goal, those involved will be working together, exercising the spirit of community, and making a conscious effort to infuse that spirit while spreading resource information into the larger community.

Family Resources has designed five innovative approaches to increase knowledge about resources and ease of service utilization, and to strengthen community: a Website, Internet Access Sites, Desktop Kiosks of Information, an Ambassador Development Program, a Hub. An overall balance of "High-Tech" and "High-Touch" characterizes these approaches.