Lucy Carney loves kids and worked in the schools for 22 years as an instructional aide before her world fell apart. A string of personal tragedies -- seemingly unrelated deaths and violent crimes affecting her dearest family members -- left her unable to work. Her depression affected all aspects of her life, and therapy alone didn't break the spell. "My daughters didn't think I would ever be happy again," she reports.

Lucy even dropped out of the application process the first time she applied to OPTIC. But that would not be the end of it. Three months later, she found an OPTIC Job Training recruitment flyer at the bottom of a bag of groceries her daughter brought her from the St. Andrews food bank. "I still have no idea who put that flyer there," she recalls, "But I thought to myself, 'this is my chance.'"

Lucy was a very quiet member of Class 20 for the first few weeks. "Five or six times, I started to get up and run because I was afraid that I would say the wrong thing." She worked through her fears, though, with the help of the staff and her classmates. "The support from the staff and my classmates was amazing. It was just what I needed."

Lucy has accepted a position as an Instructional Aide at Juvenile Hall, doing the work she loves, and it means the world to her: "This job represents that I am not a failure, not a loser, not a quitter. It means I can do things for myself. I feel so independent. I don't even know how to explain."

The world is opening back up for Lucy. She has given of herself fully to get to this point, but she feels OPTIC's Job Training and Placement Program gave her the support she needed to overcome her ghosts and self-defeating voices. "If it weren't for OPTIC, I don't know where I'd be."

The Contra Costa County Human Relations Commission has announced that OPTIC will be one of the honorees at its annual Bridging the Gap Awards Ceremony, to be held on October 27th in Martinez.

The dinner will begin at 6:00 pm at the DSA Hall at 1780 Muir Road in Martinez. Tickets are $35 each and may be purchased directly from the Commission. The Commission may be reached by mail at 2020 N. Broadway St., Suite 203-A, Walnut Creek, CA 94596 or by telephone at (925) 646-6160.

We are grateful to the Commission for this recognition of the work of so many participants, volunteers and staff members.

There may not have been any real jobs immediately at stake, but the mock interviews scheduled as a part of the Week of Caring seemed very real to the OPTIC Job Training interns who were preparing for them. Chevron volunteers Lanette Clark, Kimberly Owens, and Patricia Primus gave the interns a chance to work through their jitters, and they provided individual feedback to each of the six interns they interviewed.

Thanks also to Chevron volunteer Candy Cahill, who came by in the evening during Week of Caring to help tutor our evening ESL and Computer Basics learners. And thanks to all the volunteers who teach, mentor, tutor, interview, and take on so many other projects that keep our programs and organization going.

Week of Caring is a project of the United Way of the Bay Area, presented by Chevron, in partnership with the Volunteer Centers of the Bay Area (locally, the Volunteer Center).

A sizeable portion of Americans do not yet have access to the Internet, and who they are is still strongly correlated to income, race and age, according to the latest statistics. According to a September 5th Associated Press story, "Two of every three white students -- 67% -- use the Internet, but less than half of Black and Hispanic [students] do, according to federal data."

Another source for data about the impact of the Internet on our lives is the Pew Internet and American Life Project. In their October 2005 report on Digital Divisions, they note some important indicators:

• 33% of Americans do not go online.
• 26% of Americans age 65 and older go online, compared with 67% of those age 50-64, 80% of those age 30-49, and 84% of those age 18-29.
• 57% of African-Americans go online, compared with 70% of whites.
• 29% of those who have not graduated from high school have access, compared with 61% of high school graduates and 89% of college graduates.
• 60% of American adults who do not have a child living at home go online, compared with 83% of parents of minor children.

OPTIC's Delta Community Technology Center helps bridge the Digital Divide by giving low-income communities both access to and training in computers. If you or someone you know is new to computers, check out our Computer Basics classes. It's exciting to see people transition from, "I don't know anything about computers," to becoming proficient at Web-browsing, emailing, and using computers to learn English, write résumés or job search.

As Board members Jim Jakel and Juan Prieto move to the newly-forming OPTIC Advisory Board (currently consisting of former members of the Board of Directors who want to continue to support the organization), OPTIC is proud to announce the addition of four tremendously capable, compassionate and connected new members:

Val Davis is new to the OPTIC board but a 5th generation veteran of the community. With a diverse background in community development, including service learning and workforce development, Val brings to the Board a great wealth of experience from the private and public sectors, as well as from city, county and state agencies. She is currently Vice Chair of the Board of Delta 2000.

Sue George has served as the Chair of the Friends of OPTIC since its founding, and she brings to the Board of Directors her considerable expertise in nonprofit governance, notably including her tenure as Chair of the Board of Contact Care Helpline. Other volunteer activities have included serving as a dresser for Wardrobe for Opportunity, acting as adult representative to the Lafayette Youth Commission and many years supporting the schools, including serving as PTA president. Her professional background includes handling high-balance clients as an account officer at Fidelity Investments in Boston and assisting prospective home buyers as a real estate loan officer in California.

Rick Kaiser is a partner with Temen, Kaiser, & Cameron LLP, a firm of CPAs in Antioch, which was awarded the Antioch Chamber of Commerce's Business of the Year in 2006 and the Contra Costa Council Small Business of the Year in 2006 for its community involvement. Rick has just finished a term as President of the Antioch Rotary and serves on the Executive Committee of the Antioch Chamber of Commerce and Treasurer of the Antioch Schools Education Foundation. He is a Certified Public Accountant and a Certified Financial Planner.

Jayne Sanford is a twenty-seven year employee of The Mechanics Bank, with the last five years as the Area Manager for East Contra Costa. Based in Walnut Creek for the last thirteen years, she has served and worked with numerous non-profit associations, including: the founding board for West Contra Costa County Christmas in April (now Rebuilding Together); founding board of Wardrobe for Opportunity, now serving on the Advisory Board; Board Member for Tara Hills Christian Church and Academy; and the board of the Walnut Creek Downtown Association. She considers herself fortunate to work for an organization that not only encourages employees' community efforts, but also strongly supports these partnerships.

• New Tax Law Promotes Charitable Gifts from IRAs: For the next two years (at least), individuals who are at least 70½ years old will be able to make charitable donations directly from their Individual Retirement Accounts (IRAs) without paying federal taxes or penalties. Donors will receive the full tax benefit for their gifts, even though they will never have paid federal taxes on the income that they deposited to the IRA.
  
  The tax benefit is experimental and limited to gifts of no more than $100,000 during each of the 2006 and 2007 tax years. If you have questions about the new law and the ways it can benefit you or someone you know, please feel free to contact OPTIC Executive Director Alissa Friedman at (925) 776-1133. Donors should consult with their own tax or legal counsel before making a gift under the new provision to be sure that the gift qualifies for the special tax benefit.
  
  
• Wish List Items: We'll be putting onto our website a wish list of used (or new) items that would really help us out, but it's not there yet. In the meantime, here's a start --
  1. Palm Pilot;
  2. Digital camera (at least 4 megapixels);
  3. Licenses you don't need for Windows XP or Windows 2000 and Office 2000 or Office 2003, for our Computers for the Community program (sending computers home with our alumni and participants);
  4. Computers (minimum Pentium III, 256 MB, 20 GB hard drive, 1 GHz);
  5. DVD player;
  6. Utility shelves; and
  7. Small 2-drawer file cabinets.
  
  
• New Name Launch Date Announced: Volunteers and staff alike are busy preparing to launch our new name and brand. Our target is November 30th, the date of our next graduation ceremony. If you can, please plan to join us!
  
  
• OPTIC Picnic and Fundraiser Update: It's not too late to join us for our Saturday, September 30 fundraising walk and picnic at Buchanan Park in Pittsburg. Thanks to Nancy Parent for her help in securing the location for the event, and thanks to the many donors who are already sponsoring interns, trainees, alumni and staff. Email events@optic-cc.org to RSVP!

Searching the Internet for information can sometimes be a happy experience, and sometimes a tedious one. Let's say, for example, that your friends are tossing around the term "digital divide" lately, and you hate to admit that you don't know what they mean. So you enter those words in Google's search bar, and get 52 million results -- and the first one is from an address that begins with en.wikipedia.org.

You're seeing a link to an entry from the English language version of Wikipedia, a Web-based free-content multilingual encyclopedia project. It exists as a wiki, a website that allows any visitor to freely edit its content. Wikipedia is written collaboratively by volunteers, allowing most articles to be changed by almost anyone with access to the website.

Could a free encyclopedia, written by volunteers and open to change by any contributor, really be accurate and informative? More and more users of the Wikipedia believe so, and as Wikipedia's own article notes, a recent comparison performed by the science journal Nature of sections of Wikipedia and the Encyclopedia Britannica found that the two were close in terms of the accuracy of their articles on the natural sciences.

Wikipedia articles tend to be easy to read, well-organized and with excellent links to outside resources. They use hyperlinks heavily, which means that you can bounce happily (or dizzily) to other articles related to your topic; from the Digital Divide article, for example, there are hyperlinks to Internet, various communication technologies, global digital divide, and the United Nations.

For those who want a simplified version of Wikipedia, there is simple.wikipedia.org, which uses simple words and easy sentences. Simple Wikipedia has fewer articles but is a good resource for younger children and English learners.

Technology Reminders for OPTIC Supporters:

• You can use GoodSearch.com (powered by Yahoo!) to generate revenue for OPTIC while you search the web. Remember to select OPTIC as your organization!
• If you shop online, using the portal iGive.com as your entry point can generate significant donations for OPTIC. Shop within 45 days of signing up, and OPTIC gets a $5 bonus!

OPTIC gratefully acknowledges its corporate, foundation and government funders:

OPTIC Hiring Partners help us place Job Training and Placement participants into good jobs with opportunities for advancement. Many thanks to OPTIC Hiring Partners Ascot Staffing, Contra Costa Child Care Council, CASA of Contra Costa County, the Contra Costa Council, Springboard Advisors, and USS Posco Industries. To join them, fill out our very simple Memorandum of Understanding.

The Friends of OPTIC are an energetic, talented group of women dedicated to supporting OPTIC's work in the community. We are thrilled with their efforts to publicize our work, help with special events and donor development, and support the staff in innumerable ways. They are: Mary Jane Arnold, Katia Avila, Beth Bissell, Sharon Cahill, Jules Campbell, Jane Collett, Pam Elliott, Sue George, Judy Johnson, Sue Kidd, Kathy Leahy, Helen Loewenstein, Jan Monteyne, Sarah Morrill, Denise Silicani, and Maureen Wilhelm.

If you share our vision, we'll find a way to help you get involved -- whatever your schedule, whatever your resources. You can:

• Volunteer with the day or evening program. We have positions for mentors, tutors, mock interviewers, and much more.
• Employ an OPTIC graduate. Our candidates are proficient, experienced and motivated.
• Contract with OPTIC's internship program. From database management to mailings, we're fast, reliable and cost-effective.
• Give. Your tax-deductible contribution will change a life.
• Buy OPTIC Gear. You can help support OPTIC's programs while spiffing up your wardrobe or kitchen table.

We welcome your feedback and involvement in our program. You can reach any of us by telephone at (925) 776-1133. For inquiries about:

• OPTIC's Job Training and Placement Program, contact Program Coordinator Natalie Georgia (natalie@optic-cc.org);
• Employment opportunities for OPTIC alumni, contact Case Manager and Career Counselor Michelle Stewart (michelle@optic-cc.org);
• Delta Community Technology Center, contact Delta CTC Director Jesse Golden (jesse@optic-cc.org);
• OPTIC's integrated mental health services, contact Mental Health Clinician Catherine Warren (catherine@optic-cc.org);
• OPTIC's DataWorks internship program, contact Project Manager Nathan Clark (nathan@optic-cc.org); or
• Communications and donations, contact Executive Director Alissa Friedman (alissa@optic-cc.org).
• Accounting and human resources, contact Accountant Pam Elliott (pam@optic-cc.org).

• Keith Archuleta, Founding Partner, Emerald Consulting
• Robert Beck, Principal, Pittsburg Adult Education Center
• Linda Best, Executive Director, Contra Costa Council
• George Birdsong, President, Springboard Advisors
• Janet Brown, Housing Specialist, Center for Independent Living
• Sandy Bustillo, Interim Division Manager for General Assistance, Contra Costa County Workforce Services
• Val Davis, Vice Chair, Delta 2000
• Sue George, Chair, Friends of OPTIC
• Mary Jane Hargrove, Consultant, Accounting and Bookkeeping
• Rick Kaiser, CPA, CFP, Temen, Kaiser & Cameron CPAs, LLC
• Joe Mathai, Vice President, Wells Fargo Bank
• Nancy Parent, Councilmember, City of Pittsburg
• Ricardo M. Perez, D.D.S., Owner, Cosmetic Dental Spa
• Jayne Sanford, Area Manager, Mechanics Bank
• Tonya Smith, Assistant, Office of Supervisor Federal Glover

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Newsletter Contributors: Jesse Golden and Alissa Friedman