Sunnyhills Neighborhood Association

Sunnyhills Wins Awards

Oct 16, 2002

This past Saturday, Oct 12th, at the United Neighborhoods conference the
Sunnyhills Neighborhood Association won two major awards.



The first was the Elizabeth Anabo* BRICC award (BRICC= Building Resourceful
Inspirational Creative Community) The award is awarded by the Community
Foundation and United Neighborhoods* to the most outstanding neighborhood
organization in Santa Clara County. Sunnyhills Neighborhood Association won
because of its work on getting 1.5 million dollars worth of improvements to
a local park named Al Augustine park, for developing civic participation and
encouraging access to civic leaders in its Community Breakfast program and
its creative ways of increasing a sense of community by teaching local
families how to play harmonicas-through its music in the park program and
promoting family participation in science through its Sunnyhills Astronomy
Nights as well as promoting families hands on participation of the arts
through its Sunnyhills Youth Association's sponsored "Be an Artist Day"
which features henna tattooing, origami, t-shirt and face painting and other
hands on activities. And for promoting socialization and inclusion of all of
Sunnyhills diverse residents through activities like hosting Sunnyhills
International Potluck nights and encouraging diverse groups to participate
in its Community Breakfast programs.



The Sunnyhills Neighborhood Association also won the BRICC award in 1999.



The Sunnyhills Neighborhood Association also won the award "Reaching out to
Youth" which is for the best neighborhood association that has programs that
reach out and involve youth in it civic and community activities. Some of
the Sunnyhills Neighborhood Association outreach to youth during the past
year including getting several youth groups to come and participate in the
Community Breakfast programs where the youth got to address youth and ethnic
issues with Milpitas Civic leaders and the Sunnyhills Neighborhood
Association programs that are targeted to involve the whole family like the
Sunnyhills Astronomy Nights, the Music in the Park program, the
International Potluck nights and its Youth Association sponsored "Be an
Artist Day"





* United Neighborhoods is made up of over 70 neighborhood organizations
throughout Santa Clara County and work on neighborhood improvements and
developing a sense of community.



* Elizabeth Anabo was a coordinator for the Community Foundation, who
championed neighborhood development and causes to and for the Community
Foundation till she died at the age of 34 of cancer in 2000) -as a side note
she was very instrumental in helping the Sunnyhills Neighborhood Association
during some turbulent times in the mid 90's when the then Sunnyhills
Improvement Association looked on the verge of collapsing, by offering
additional time and counseling to the Sunnyhills Improvement Association
leadership and helped focused the group to keep after its goals. Later as
she helped stabilize the group the group decided a new name was in order and
changed Sunnyhills Improvement Association to the Sunnyhills Neighborhood
Association. In many ways she deserves much of the credit for assisting the
organization get over the difficult times and helped train its leadership to
the point where we were effective enough to win the 1999 and the 2002
Elizabeth Anabo awards.



For more information call the Sunnyhills Neighborhood Association at
408-946-5260