Nonprofits Wow and Woo at Fast Pitch SB

(L-R) Chief Energy Officer Seth Streeter, Mayor Helene Schneider, Fast Pitch SB Winner Bethany Markee of Solvang Viking Kitchen, Jose Hutton of Hub 81, courtesy photo

(L-R) Chief Energy Officer Seth Streeter, Mayor Helene Schneider, Fast Pitch SB Winner Bethany Markee of Solvang Viking Kitchen, Jose Hutton of Hub 81, courtesy photo

Organizers from Social Venture Partners say inaugural event will become an annual opportunity for local nonprofits to gain exposure, refine messages and win money.

Thursday night’s inaugural Fast Pitch SB—a Shark Tank style competition for nonprofits to make three-minute pitches to a panel of judges and a live audience for cash awards was an exciting, successful event for all concerned, but Solvang Viking Cafe was the big winner of the night. Founder Bethany Markee—a former professional chef who took over the lunch program at the local elementary school cafeteria at Solvang School—now has an additional $26,000 in prizes to expand her program to feed more students.

Social Venture Partners Santa Barbara (SVPSB) chose the ten finalists out of  a field of more than 100 applications from nonprofits looking to receive personal coaching and communications training from experts in the field.

Enthusiastic Fast Pitch audience, courtesy photo

Enthusiastic Fast Pitch audience, courtesy photo

 

The award winners are:

$5,000 Mission Award: Angels Foster Care

$5,000 State Award: A Different Point of View

$10,000 Audience Award: Solvang Viking Café

$15,000 Grand Prix Award: Solvang Viking Café

Plus, each of the ten finalists received a $1,000 SVP Award:

A Different Point of View

AHA!

Angels Foster Care of Santa Barbara

Talented teen Jamey Geston entertained the crowd. Photo by Leslie Dinaberg

Talented teen Jamey Geston entertained the crowd. Photo by Leslie Dinaberg

CASA of Santa Barbara County

Museum of Contemporary Art Santa Barbara

Santa Ynez Fruit and Vegetable Rescue (“Veggie Rescue”)

Sarah House Santa Barbara

Solvang Elementary School’s Viking Cafe

The Center for Urban Agriculture at Fairview Gardens

Sanctuary Centers of Santa Barbara

For more information about the program click here.

—Leslie Dinaberg

Originally published in Santa Barbara SEASONS on May 17, 2014.

Why it’s okay to swoon

TwilightAt the last Twilight movie, my girlfriend and I decided there should be a drinking game where you did a shot every time Jacob (18-year-old actor Taylor Lautner) took off his shirt and you heard the gasping chorus of all the teenage girls in the theater.

When you gasp you gulp. When you gasp you gulp. Big gasp. Big gulp.

Had we been playing I would have been just as tipsy as the Clearasil crowd.

I know that some people will be appalled to hear that even middle-aged moms can still swoon at the sight of a beautiful teenaged werewolf man-boy. I can understand their reaction. Every year I get a little closer to having a teenaged son of my own and then I understand their reaction even more. But here’s the thing: somewhere inside every grown up lives the child-and the teenager-they used to be.

Admittedly, I may be more in touch with my inner 13-year-old than many of my peers-though certainly not the ones who attended Tuesday’s night’s Angels Foster Care benefit screening of Eclipse at the Arlington Theatre. This is sometimes great and sometimes downright annoying, but it definitely helps me appreciate pop culture.

When I watch the Twilight movies I’m not someone’s mom and I’m not someone’s wife, I’m a teenaged girl, just like the rest of Team Jacob.

Clearly I’m not alone.

Describing the indescribable pull of the Twilight series (both books and movies), a 36-year-old mother of two told CNN reporter Breeanna Hare: “As grown women we know that we never forget our first love, the first time our heart was really broken. I just think that so many women can kind of identify with the experiences and emotions and underlying message of how difficult it is to make choices in life.”

New York Magazine columnists Em & Lo eloquently put it, “Twilight taps into a time when passion is as much about fantasy as reality, before drunken college hookups, before booty calls, before scheduling sex into a marriage. Twilight reinvents sex for women who might have placed it at the bottom of a to-do list.”

Some of my friends feel the same way (though not passionately enough to let me use their real names).

“Every time I look at R-Pat (tabloid-speak for Robert Pattinson, who stars as dreamy vampire Edward in the films), I feel like I am 12 years old again,” says Gena.

“Of course we don’t read the books or watch the movies for their literary merit,” laughs Serena, another mom friend. “But Twilight is the ultimate teenager girl’s fantasy. Two beautiful, sweet and undemanding boys fall madly in love with a plain, ordinary Jane. How can any woman, of any age, resist the spell of that daydream?”

Author Stephenie Meyers sounds a little surprised by the attraction to these characters. She told Time magazine, “I didn’t write these books specifically for the young-adult audience. I wrote them for me. I don’t know why they span the ages so well, but I find it comforting that a lot of thirtysomethings with kids, like myself, respond to them as well-so I know that it’s not just that I’m a 15-year-old on the inside.”

I think she’s wrong-Meyers is a 15-year-old inside, and a 9-year-old and a 25-year-old and so on. We all are. But sometimes it takes a cultural phenomenon like Twilight for us to realize it.

Share your Twilight theories with Leslie@LeslieDinaberg.com. For more columns visit www.LeslieDinaberg.comOriginally appeared in the Santa Barbara Daily Sound on July 2, 2010.