Wine Country Times

Napa Valley CanDo, a grassroots volunteer group, is continuing to grow with its already existing projects that help feed the community, as well as new endeavors CanDo plans to implement despite the challenges of COVID-19. 

"We connect, inspire and empower neighbors by making it easy to take positive action as volunteers and to learn about our community," Napa Valley CanDo President Camille Gentry told Wine Country Times. "All of CanDo’s efforts are designed to strengthen and enrich the lives of Napa Valley residents. We create and implement dynamic projects when we recognize unmet community needs, and we collaborate with other local service organizations to further our mutual goals."

CanDo projects include a fundraiser called Give!Guide, which encourages donors to contribute to local nonprofits, the Farmer's Market pickup of donations from local vendors on Saturdays, the CanDo garden which gives fresh produce to food banks and the Napa Food Project that picks up food from donators then takes the donations to local food banks. 

What makes CanDo unique is not only the number of programs it initiates and volunteers in, but also that it does day-to-day operations. 

"We specialize in done-in-a-day, family-friendly volunteer opportunities. We make it easy for folks to get out and get involved in their communities – whether by attending an educational event, a special program or through volunteer events sponsored by CanDo or by another terrific Napa nonprofit," Gentry said. 

Gentry said that COVID-19 did affect the shift of focus for the organization. She explained that former CanDo President Hilary Zunin, who recently died, spent the majority of 2020 charting a committee called Volunteers on Call (VOC) to recruit volunteers for COVID-19 testing sites, food banks and many other community projects outside of what CanDo focuses on.

"We also made changes to our 2020 Give!Guide to adapt to conditions caused by the pandemic. We reduced the timeframe of the campaign and went to a website-only model. In past years, we have issued a catalog with corresponding website. This model allowed us to reduce the amount of work required to get the campaign up and running. As well as allow for more Nonprofits to participate," Gentry said. 

Gentry said that the Give!Guide total donations exceeded any other year with $710,408 in donations. 

For the Napa Food Project, which was started in 2016, has generated more than $33,000 and 70,000 pounds of food which went to local food banks since March of last year, Gentry said. 

"Although we had to limit the number of volunteers in our garden for the Food Bank, we still grew over 4,000 pounds of fresh produce for the Napa Food Pantry – almost double last year's harvest," Gentry said. 

The next major project that CanDo plans to accomplish is its Gleaning Project, which will go live in April 2021. CanDo plans to take donations of laden fruit from the community to bring in more fruit to the local food banks. 

"If you would like to help and have a fruit laden tree or two located in Napa, please email NVCando@gmail.com or call the Napa Food Bank at 707-253-6128," Gentry said. 

For more information and details on the projects headed or participated in by "CanDoers," visit http://www.nvcando.org/.