On July 6, 2023, GLIDE welcomed back the return of our Indoor Dining service! For three + years, our persevering staff weathered a challenging pandemic, serving three meals a day, 364 days out of the year outside on Ellis street in front of GLIDE.
We are elated about this #Returntocommunity and what it means not just for the GLIDE community but for the Tenderloin and everyone who calls this special place home.
This milestone marks the beginning of a six month campaign where we seek to elevate the empathy and compassion that constitutes the core of who GLIDE is but will continue celebrating the return and renewal of a number of GLIDE programs, including our Women’s Center, our Rental Assistance program, our in-person legal services clinic, and so much more!
Our July 6 return to community received a great deal of publicity which you can review below.
More events and program service news will be posted on this page so please keep coming back!
News coverage
KTVU – GLIDE serves its 1st indoor meal since COVID pandemic
Social media coverage
GLIDE's Legal Services Clinic Expands Offerings to In-Person and Online
Glide Memorial Church’s Backpack Giveaway Celebration
Glide Memorial Church has been providing backpacks and school supplies for Tenderloin children annual for over a decade. On August 12th, we distributed 300 backpacks for participants at the Janice Mirikitani Family, Youth and Child Care Center, the Family Resource Center, those living in Glide housing and the congregation’s Glide Kids participants.
The Tenderloin area is home to the largest population of children in San Francisco. In the Tenderloin, over 1500 families live below the poverty line, that number alone spurs us into action. During the pandemic, kids and families were unable to pick up their backpacks in person and backpacks were sent directly to our partner programs.
This year, the event was able to successfully #ReturntoCommunity, with the help of volunteers from Glide and Code Tenderloin.
Heartfelt Outreach Amid City’s Forgotten Vows
In the heart of San Francisco, a silent crisis continues to unfold. Many families living in RVs near Lake Merced with young children face an uncertain future as they grapple with fines, towing, and displacement threats. Their homes, stationed in RVs due to varying circumstances, now risk being taken away due to stringent parking rules and a city grappling to find a solution. The story has also recently garnered attention on ABC7 News.
Read more about GLIDE’s leadership as a voice of advocacy for the marginalized.
Overdose Awareness Panel
On August 27, GLIDE’s Center for Social Justice hosted a panel discussion to confront the alarming overdose crisis in San Francisco. City residents are living through a fentanyl epidemic not unlike the Crack epidemic of the 1980s and early 1990s.
The panel featured noted New York-based Harm Reduction educator Sam Rivera, along with GLIDE’s Director of Health Access Michael Discepola, Lydia Bransten, Executive Director (Gubbio Project) and Dr. Leslie Suen, physician/professor/researcher at the University of California San Francisco.
Watch media coverage of the event by ABC7 News.
GLIDE Community Comes Together with SFPD
On August 28th, there was an Officer involved shooting in the Tenderloin neighborhood. GLIDE believes in coming together with truth and unconditional love when something threatens our community’s safety and wellbeing.
To acknowledge the pain and fear this event caused, we convened a public meeting with community members and SFPD Officers, including Police Chief William Scott.
We identified three ways for the Tenderloin Community and Police Department to work together to prevent this from happening again:
1) Work with the SFPD to the better understand entrenched forms of systemic racism, including shared trips to the Legacy Museum in Alabama
2) Participate in ongoing race and reconciliation workshops with Officers
3) Host ongoing community meetings to maintain consistent communication between residents and the Tenderloin Police Station under the leadership of Captain Sergio Chin.
San Francisco’s Glide Memorial Church held a birthday celebration for its longtime pastor Rev. Cecil Williams Saturday.
The church was celebrating Williams’ 94th birthday, but also his legacy. The reverend announced his retirement earlier this year, after more than 60 years at the church’s helm, to spend his time focusing on family and health. See more media coverage on GLIDE’s news page.
GLIDE celebrates Assemblymember Matt Haney and a $1M milestone
It is with great joy that our GLIDE family warmly welcomed Matt Haney on September 25 to thank him for his support of a $1 million allocation in the State budget to fund GLIDE’s modernization project! Read about it here!
Dr. Fromer is a sixth-generation San Franciscan who, earlier in her life as a young mother raising three boys, was a GLIDE client. She worked her way out of poverty to manage some of the Bay Area’s most cherished and important community organizations, including the Children’s Council and the YMCA.
Her appointment is the culmination of an extensive and intentional search for the best person to build on the legacy of love and compassion created by co-founders Rev. Cecil Williams and Janice Mirikitani. She will spearhead the GLIDE Forward agenda, which is the organization’s strategy to revitalize and rebuild as a beacon of hope and impact for the next 60 years.
Check out the SF Chronicle’s story about Dr. Fromer.