Meet Betty, an Adult Day Program Instructor who has been with Las Trampas for almost 9 years! Betty says that our new state-of-the-art facility has been fantastic for both staff and participants. She especially loves spending time with participants in our safety-regulated kitchen and our accessible garden. Betty shares that Las Trampas has had a tremendous impact on her life. Seeing participants laugh brings joy to her heart, and she enjoys seeing community outings bring out the best in participants. Betty loves her job and all the participants at Las Trampas so much!

Our community came together today to celebrate the life of Jeremy, our beloved participant of 40 years. It was a beautiful gathering filled with lots of shared stories and love. Jeremy will be forever missed, but his memory will live on in the heart of Las Trampas.

Today, on National Caregivers Day, we celebrate the heart and soul of Las Trampas: our direct care staff! Our direct care staff provide a variety of essential services for our participants, including personal care and physical and emotional support. Our caregivers go above and beyond every day to empower adults with developmental disabilities to thrive at home, at work, and in the community. We are so grateful for all of their hard work and dedication, we couldn’t do it without them!

Join Las Trampas as we celebrate Black History Month and the incredible contributions of Black individuals with intellectual and developmental disabilities (IDD) and their families to our nation’s history, culture, and progress. They face unique challenges due to intersecting systems of oppression, but their strength, resilience, and achievements inspire us all.

Read community member Elna Hall’s article, Autism, While Black, about the potential dangers that may come with police interactions for her son with autism: https://ncsa-admin.medium.com/autism-while-black-540d949ba662.

And check out https://blackdisabilitycenter.org for more related resources.

Today and every day, Las Trampas is committed to creating inclusive environments where individuals with IDD, of all races and ethnicities, can lead full lives.

Congratulations Carmen, Las Trampas’ 2023 Employee of the Year! Carmen has been with Las Trampas for 22 years. She is kind, caring, and empathetic towards the day program participants she supports. She always comes to work with a positive attitude, and her work ethic is impeccable. Participants state that Carmen “knows what she is doing and she knows us very well.” Thank you, Carmen! We appreciate your many years of dedication to Las Trampas and your embodiment of Las Trampas’ mission to support adults with intellectual and developmental disabilities to lead full lives!

We are thrilled to announce our 2024 Spirit of Las Trampas recipients: Bob Damaschino and Terry Murray! Bob and Terry were extraordinarily dedicated and generous with their time and talent while on our Board of Directors. Since retiring from our Board last July, both have stayed on as exemplary committee members. Thank you, Bob and Terry, for being driving forces in support of people with intellectual and developmental disabilities in our community.

Meet Anne, one of our Adult Day Program Instructors who has been with us for 6 years! Anne finds her job fun and rewarding – she loves seeing how excited participants are arriving to our beautiful campus each morning, doing art projects with them, and going on outings. Her favorite outing has been to the NIAD Art Center in Richmond, a studio and gallery that supports adult artists with disabilities, and seeing how inspired our participants were by the work taking place there. Anne is excited for more upcoming outings in San Francisco and Oakland!

November 2023

Dear Friends,

One of the highlights of my job at Las Trampas is being steps away from our Adult Day Program.  Mario is always there with a fist bump, and Sekander with a request to dance to the Beatles. Joy illuminates the halls, and you can truly feel how much our participants love being here. In every classroom, I see inclusion, friendship, and belonging. This is why I’m asking for your support, to ensure that people with intellectual and developmental disabilities have a place where they feel like they belong.

I recently witnessed the beautiful friendship between Alicia and Melissa. Alicia has Tuberous Sclerosis, and as a result, she is nonverbal, paralyzed on her right side, and developmentally two years old. She touches Melissa’s hand to communicate. Melissa, who is on the autism spectrum, puts on The Weeknd when Alicia signals that she wants her music. Melissa is constantly asking Alicia’s mom, Yvonne, questions about her friend, working very hard to understand Alicia’s wants and needs. 

Yvonne and her husband, Jim, are incredible parents, who have worked very hard to do the best for Alicia and give her a happy life, but Yvonne acknowledges that “there is stuff I can’t give her…community, a sense of belonging.” That is where Las Trampas comes in.

Since joining Las Trampas, Yvonne has seen Alicia become brighter, happier, more well-rounded, and most of all, independent. She’s learning how to push the button to open the front doors to our building, and she seems to need less and less help when she’s away from her parents. When Alicia won the award for “Best Dancer” during Las Trampas’ Participant Appreciation Day in October, she understood it was something special and she was very proud of it. She was smiling ear to ear when she showed her brothers. “It included her in a way she’s not usually included,” says Yvonne. “The best thing for Alicia is the sense of belonging somewhere other than home. Her needs are really met…the staff really go above and beyond for her.” It’s difficult to know what Alicia wants and needs unless you know her really well, but Yvonne has seen both Las Trampas staff and participants, like Melissa, rise to the challenge.

It is your support for Las Trampas that creates opportunities for our participants to build a sense of inclusion, friendship, and belonging in our community. You can support our friends and neighbors with disabilities by making—and doubling!—your gift today. A group of generous early contributors, including the Haws Family, Karen and Tom Mulvaney, and Eric Rudney, will match every gift received until December 31^st, up to $45,000.

As Alicia, who is 32, got older, Yvonne noticed that community outings made Alicia come alive. Knowing about Las Trampas’ commitment to bringing participants out into the community, Yvonne felt it was time to enroll Alicia in our day program. We are so happy that Alicia is thriving at Las Trampas, but it was a very hard three years for her and her family while she was on our waitlist, which overlapped with the COVID pandemic. When Las Trampas finally had a spot open for Alicia, “it was a godsend,” says Yvonne. Alicia now gets to go on adventures off campus three days a week. On the other two days, Alicia loves trail walks with her class.

Now every morning, when Alicia sees her lunch pail being made for her day at Las Trampas, she starts giggling and laughing. Alicia’s ability to go to Las Trampas is so important to her family that Yvonne used to lift Alicia and her wheelchair into the car every day to drive her to program.

Like Alicia, there are many adults with intellectual and developmental disabilities who have been eagerly sitting on our waitlist for years. In fact, we now have a waitlist of 53 participants for our Adult Day Program. While our new facility provides the space we need for additional participants, we—like most direct-service nonprofits—are facing profound staffing challenges. We need additional resources for staff recruitment and retention, so we can bring more participants off our waitlist. In addition to challenges with staffing, winter storms have caused significant damage to Las Trampas’ properties, taking out five linear feet of land and a fence at our Moraga Blvd property, and collapsing a retention wall built to protect our main campus. These damages are costly and must be repaired.

Las Trampas has the expertise and abiding commitment to meet this moment. However, community support is the key to funding participant outings and providing the gold-standard services and safe facilities that our participants deserve.

Will you make a gift to Las Trampas that is significant to you today? Your contribution will be doubled and will make possible the community outings, staff recruitment, and storm repairs that are essential to making our programs a place of inclusion, friendship, and belonging. As always, thank you for your support.

With Gratitude,

Daniel Hogue

Executive Director

We are so appreciative of the Lafayette Garden Club for their generous donation to help us maintain and tend to our beautiful garden on campus! The Lafayette Garden Club aims to stimulate the knowledge of gardening and encourage community beautification. Thanks to them, our participants have the opportunity to take pride in purchasing seeds, planting them, and tending to the herbs and vegetables as they grow! https://www.lafayettegardenclub.com/