When COVID-19 hit the Bay Area earlier this year, the staff at Brighter Beginnings transformed their organization into a sort of emergency center.
Brighter Beginnings, which offers a Head Start early education program to help families prepare their young kids to be successful in school and provides basic medical services at its clinics, started providing a wider array of services as the region shut down.
“We turned our offices into a mini food bank,” said Angelica Ayala, senior program manager for the Head Start programs at Brighter Beginnings. The staff worked to do safe drop-offs of food, diapers and other supplies that families needed, and they helped families file for unemployment.
It was a huge challenge, Ayala explained. At a time when families need the services of the organization more than ever, the dangers of the virus make coordinating logistics harder than ever.