Golden Sierra Life Skills

Golden Sierra Life Skills is a 501 (c) 3 non-profit corporation that has been providing services to families in the Northern California Foothill region for 10 years. Our Mission: “. . . Provide Opportunities through education to reunite families. . ." We have also provided services for the City of Hercules in California and our programs are provided in Nevada County California, Browns County South Dakota, and recently in Kenya, Africa.

Golden Sierra Life Skills achieves our Mission Statement by providing parenting education, support, and life skills training to parents in our: Men, Infants, and Children, (MIC), Program for fathers/father figures with children 0 -5 years of age; Man-to-Man Parenting Program for fathers/father figures with children 6 – teen; and Co-Parenting Program. We also provide the Kids in Need of Diversion, (KIND), Program which is a condensed educational program for young people from 11 – 17 who are engaging or, are beginning to engage in at-risk activities, and the Kids At-Risk Education, (KARE), Program which is a facility/school base program that is done over a 30 - 32 week duration that offers education in diversion, prevention, positive self-esteem, and asset building. Golden Sierra Life Skills is also the contract provider for the Male Involvement Program for the KidZKount: Placer Community Action Counsel Head Start/Early Head Start Program and developed and implemented the successful Male Involvement School Site Male Ambassador Program. Recently Golden Sierra Life Skills introduced the successful Male Involvement Male Ambassador Program in rural villages in Africa in a partnership with Village Care International. Additionally, Golden Sierra Life Skills is currently working on a project with the Shoulder to Shoulder Program in Sacramento County which is a faith base outreach program for at-risk youth.

Golden Sierra Life Skills had been working with very old equipment and software while trying to provided needed services for the community. We started by up dating our equipment 5 years ago and recently we were referred to Tech Soup Stock as an opportunity to bring our software technology up to date.

Golden Sierra Life Skills purchased and installed a Microsoft Program our computers. After purchasing the Microsoft Program we redesigned our informational brochures and made them more user friendly to make information more available to the community. These new brochures had a much more professional look to them and were part of the packets that were submitted to the State of California to obtain a State of California service mark on all of our programs.

Golden Sierra Life Skills staff started producing presentations with the easy to use Power Point Program located in the Microsoft program. These Power Point presentations have been used to show local grantors the involvement of program participants that they were never able to see before. After seeing the Power Point presentations our outreach to fathers/father figures in our parenting programs became real and measurable. We used the Power Point presentations in the Male Involvement Program that we do for the KidZKount: Placer Community Action Counsel Head Start/Early Head Start program as well. Our “Daddy in the Picture” Program captured father/father figures interacting with their children and having a significant and positive impact on their children’s lives.

When the opportunity to partner with Village Care International came about we needed to be culturally sensitive to the needs of the rural villages in Kenya, Africa. It was necessary to modify the Male Involvement Male Ambassador Program for this project, and it needed to be done quickly. This was achieved without any difficulties using the Microsoft program due to the user friendly format. The project was completed timely and the presentations were successfully done. At last report 9 men volunteered to be the Male Ambassador’s in 7 local villages and the team has more outreach and trainings to do.

Golden Sierra Life Skills staff has been able to provide more effective e-newsletters and has redesigned our web site using the Microsoft software because it is so easy to create our documents and make them user friendly and easy to understand for the community.

The Microsoft program has given us easy to use tools to improve our program information and the way we show our grantors how we achieve our goals. Our male parenting programs have life now and we can show that program participants are receiving an education that will provide and opportunity to improve parenting skills and family functioning not only in our local community, but our state, and internationally as well.

Truly, we have increased our ability to achieve our Mission Statement and provide quality educational information all at the same time.