Category: Uncategorized

2023 Employee of the Year

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!

2024 Spirit of Las Trampas Awardees

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

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!

Alicia’s Story – Holiday Appeal 2023

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 31st, 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

Lafayette Garden Club

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/

Generosity this Holiday Season

Thanks to the generosity and kindness of everyone who contributed to Las Trampas this holiday season, we raised nearly $170,000 to support our community of adults with intellectual and developmental disabilities!

With these contributions, we will continue to support participants to lead lives full of inclusion, friendship, and belonging, built here at Las Trampas. We will invest in community outings, supply our day program with art supplies and cooking ingredients, replace the furniture at one of our residential homes, and start Emergency and Moving Funds for participants in need. Our donors made this happen, and we could not be more grateful!

International Day of People with Disabilities – Meet Mike

December 3rd is International Day of Persons with Disabilities! Today we are celebrating the achievements of Mike, a participant in our Independent Living Services (ILS) program for the past 16 years. Mike works at the Safeway in Lafayette and likes to cook chicken noodle soup at home. A few years ago, Judy, our director of ILS, took Mike on a tour of the San Francisco Channel 7 and 5 studios, where he learned how to be the weather man for the day.

On this International Day of Persons with Disabilities, we show support for and a commitment to creating inclusive, accessible, and diverse communities so people with disabilities can participate fully, equally, and effectively in society with others.

Giving Tuesday 2023

Dear Friends,

Watching the steady stream of contributions coming in on #GivingTuesday, it was hard not to feel overwhelmed by the generosity of our community.

On this day of collective giving, our Las Trampas community came together to raise nearly $30,000 for our friends and neighbors with developmental disabilities!

THANK YOU to those who contributed to our #GivingTuesday campaign! Your support for Las Trampas creates opportunities for inclusion, friendship, and belonging for our participants, and helps us go the extra mile to ensure they receive the increased services they need to discover their capabilities and lead full lives.

With immense gratitude,

Dan Hogue

Executive Director

National Epilepsy Awareness Month – Meet Gabby

November is National Epilepsy Awareness Month! Epilepsy is a neurological disorder that can cause seizures, mood changes, sleep challenges, and thinking and memory issues. 3.4 million people in the United States are living with epilepsy, and a third of them live with uncontrolled seizures because no available treatment works for them.

Gabby, one of our newest participants in our Adult Day Program, lives with epilepsy. Gabby likes cooking Mexican food, watching soap operas, dancing, coloring, and doing yoga. She values the independence of living in her own home because she likes to have her own space and organize it the way she wants. At Las Trampas, Gabby really likes the “Life Skills” class because she has learned how to be patient when she is frustrated with others. Gabby is super excited to make more friends at Las Trampas!

View more stories of people living with epilepsy at https://www.epilepsy.com/changeourstory