Marie Lakin, an active community volunteer and 32-year resident of east Ventura, is seeking a seat in Ventura’s new District 5 this fall.

Lakin recently retired from the State Legislature where she worked for Assemblymember Pedro Nava and State Senators Fran Pavley and Henry Stern. She has been involved with important statewide public policy, as well as with cities in Ventura, Santa Barbara and Los Angeles counties on community issues. Previously, as a long-time associate in a Ventura public relations firm, Lakin worked with many local businesses. She has endorsements from more than 50 local leaders.

An 11-year member of the city’s Cultural Affairs Commission and past chair and co-chair, Lakin has served on many local boards, including the Ventura Visitors and Convention Bureau, the Ventura Education Partnership, Serra Cross Conservancy, and San Buenaventura Heritage (Dudley House). She worked on city initiatives including ArtWalk, the city’s 150th celebration, the library study committee and was one of the group who worked with Union Pacific Railroad to finally paint the graffiti-covered trestle over the 101 Downtown in 2012.

She by the Ventura Chamber of Commerce for her civic volunteerism and Outstanding Citizen in 2010 by the California Teachers Association for her volunteer work in the schools.

Since leaving the legislature, she founded a non-profit, ArtsVentura, which does private fundraising for local cultural projects, including ArtWalk. Her most recent project was putting together the final funding for muralist MB Hanrahan’s vibrant SOHO Kites project on Ventura Avenue.

“I believe it is very important now that we have district elections that we have people who are not only vested in their own areas, but who also understand citywide issues,” Lakin said. “I want to bring public service back into fashion. Too often politics at all levels has been about winning and not about serving the needs of the people who we are entrusted to represent.”

East Ventura has not had a representative on the City Council in almost 20 years. “District elections have facilitated the opportunity for new voices to be heard,” Lakin said. “It is time to have an advocate for the east end.”

Lakin has built a comprehensive website with city news and a blog with commentary on local issues, www.marielakin.org. “If elected, I plan to put up another site for District 5 and frequently update it with news. Government needs to be transparent and information easy to find,” she said.

Lakin is married and the mother of two children.

Avenue Library

Children & Family Events

Bilingual Early Literacy Class 5/ 7, 14, & 21 Mondays @ 6– 6:45 pm

Join us every week for stories, poems, music, movement, a simple craft & fun!

Crafternoon 5/12 & 26 Saturdays @ 12:30– 1:30pm

Get your craft on in the afternoon!

Adult Literacy Classes

Laubach Literacy English Classes 5/ 7, 14, & 21 Mondays @11am – 12pm

Pumarosa English Classes 5/2, 9, 16, 23, & 30 Wednesdays @ 9–10am & @ 6-7pm

Learn English in a fun environment that combines conversation, singing, and technology.

Super Brain Yoga 5/12 Saturday @ 10am-12pm Attend this hands-on workshop to improve memory, achieve mental clarity, and gain emotional calmness.

Foster Library

Adult Programs & Special Events

Sierra Club Educational Series 5/8 Tuesday @ 5:30-7pm

Learn about great places to hike, camp, and scenic spots around Ventura County.

Adult STEAM Workshop 5/19 Saturday @2-3pm, 3rd Saturday of the month

Each month a different themed program will be presented.

Ongoing Events

Spanish Conversation Group 5/5, 12, 19, & 26 Saturdays @ 10:30am in the Rentfrow Room

Join this informal group to chat and practice your Español! Bring your own coffee!

Twisted Stitchers Fiber Arts Club 5/3 & 17 Thursday @ 10:30am

Get together with makers from all across the fiber-arts world. Meet, teach, connect, share.

Children’s Events

Early Literacy Class 5/1, 2, 8, 9, 15, 16, 22, 23, 29, & 30 Tuesdays & Wednesdays @ 10:30am

A great way to introduce your child to early literacy and the library. Join us every week for stories, poems, music, movement, a simple craft, and fun!

Paws for Reading 5/5, 12, 19, & 26 Saturdays @ 12-1pm

Read aloud to a registered service dog. (sign-up required)

Hill Road

Children’s Events

Discover Science 5/8 Tuesday @ 4pm

Join Rachel Chang for this hands on workshop as she demonstrates science principles of chemistry, physics, and biology.

Early Literacy Class 5/2, 9, 16, 23, & 30 Wednesdays @ 10:30 am & 5/19 Saturday @ 10:30 am

A great way to introduce your child to early literacy and the library. Join us every week for stories, poems, music, movement, a simple craft, and fun!

Maker Lab 5/17 Thursday @ 4pm

Join us each month as we learn how to use a 3D printer, build with Legos, connect squishy circuits, or create with VEX robotics. Aimed at 10 and up.

Adult Events

Financial Wellness Series: Living Wills and Estates 5/3 Thursday @ 6-7pm

Join us for this informative presentation covering wills, living trusts, durable powers of attorney. Presented by Ventura County Credit Union

Saticoy Library

Children & Family Events

Lego Play 5/ 7, 14, & 21Mondays @ 1- 5pm

Bring your imagination and experiment with creative designs. Children of all ages welcome!

Adult Classes & Events

English Classes 5/2,7, 9, 14, 16, 21, 23, & 30

Monday & Wednesday @ 3- 5pm

ESL Conversation Groups hosted by Laubach Literacy of Ventura County

by Karen Helen Szatkowski

Podoconiosis is the common medical name of Mossy Foot which is found in the highland areas of Eastern Africa, India and Latin America. It is debilitating to the individual and the community and sadly is one of the few diseases that could potentially be eliminated in one generation. It is caused by barefoot contact with the soil. Everyone who is in the soil without foot protection has the volcanic silica in their lymphatic systems. Only about one in thirteen develop an intolerance to it and contract podoconiosis which amounts to almost a million people in Ethiopia. Those living in Wolaita in Southern Ethiopia live largely by subsistence farming, barefoot, with little ability to buy shoes and socks and almost no information on hygiene.

This is where our hero, Dr. Nathan Barlow, a Christian Medical Missionary, set up the Mossy Foot Project in 1997 to treat the disease and the attendant miseries of the sufferers. Stigmatization of people with the disease is seriously detrimental to many aspects of their community life; being excluded from school, meetings, churches and barred from marriage with unaffected individuals. The disease, over time, forms a moss-like skin and keloids( bumpy growths) and later as it ascends the skin of the feet and legs grows either soft and fluid or hard and fibrotic. The appearance is grotesque and the feet have a foul odor, causing them to be treated like lepers.

The Mossy Foot Project has had many successes and has moved beyond the disease itself into shoe manufacturing for the patients; education on repeated cleansing of the feet and lower extremities; assuring the community that the disease is not communicable; vocational training of the cured; providing education concerning podoconiosis at government health clinics, and, lastly, but most importantly, sending a message of hope. From a small clinic at the beginning the Project, Mossy Foot today has sixteen treatment clinics and has helped more than 90,000 patients over the years but much work remains.

Upon Dr. Barlow’s death in 2004, the donors thought that because the doctor died the Mossy Foot Project was finished. Jim Daly, the husband of Dr. Barlow’s youngest daughter Sharon, wrote to the donors informing them that the project would continue. Jim served as President until a few years ago when Sharon became President. The Dalys worked in the States raising awareness and funding for the work. They visited the Project several times a year, experiencing the victories and challenges such an endeavor is subject to. Sadly, Jim passed away in 2016.

Ventura, we are proud to say, is the headquarters of the foundation. Sharon Daly continues her work along with Dr. Barlow’s grandson, Kevin, who is vice president. The Daly family has lived in Ventura since 1984 and other than travel for vacation and to Africa for work, Sharon and her son Kevin enjoy most days here safe and healthy, being personally acquainted with so many other people in the world that are not. If you would like to get more information about the Mossy Foot Project, please check the web site www.mossyfoot.com.

by Jill Forman

“Look at this wonderful rock pathway!” A group of us were at Emma Wood State Beach, walking towards the river mouth. We found ourselves on a cleared path with rock borders. Also rock piles, happy faces, and groupings of reddish rocks; an easy route through the dune area while staying off the dunes themselves. A group of plant lovers, we were impressed.

“Who,” we all wondered, “could have done this?”

A little later, we ran into two women with dogs and buckets and tools. They had heard us talking, and were delighted to announce, “It was us! We built the whole thing. Took us five years of coming down every day.”

Dorene and Janet, a retired teacher and nurse, live in Ventura. They loved walking along the beach to the river mouth, and hanging out there as the tide came in. They found that it was more difficult to get back to the parking area at high tide without tramping over the dunes, so they made a path. “It all started as a way to protect the dunes.”

In the summer of 2012, they put down a single line of rocks to mark the route, then they cleared the path and moved the rocks to each side. After that, they made the ocean side higher for high tides. About 3-4 years ago there was a storm surge with flooding, and they had to relocate parts of it and move it about 20 feet back. “It feels like we’ve moved a million rocks.”

Once they had the path established, they still need to come down daily for maintenance. They remove invasive ice plant, take out garbage bags full of trash.

They call the beach “our gym,” also “our gem;” they have lost weight, developed muscles, and even lowered their cholesterol. Their energy goes into helping themselves “and doing something for the earth every day.” They tell me you can see the path on Google Earth.

The garbage they pick up has been “…everything you can think of.” Especially clothing items: their most bizarre finds have been a plastic breast and a set of upper dentures. After the Montecito flood, they found many shoes on the beach “…expensive shoes, single shoes, little kids’ shoes. Made us cry.”

Piles of rocks on the sensitive dune habitats have been demolished; “…the biggest one took us 11 days.” They have gone through 14 pairs of heavy leather gloves, and uncounted garbage bags, all of which they bought with their own money.

“People ask us: what organization are you with, who is helping you. Nobody; we have done it all ourselves.” They meet people from all over the world. “People feel safe because it is clean and open.” They took Dorene’s 94 year old mother to the beach and she was able to walk the whole path.

They have a joke that they are DJ’s: “Dj’s play rock and roll, Dorene and Janet rock and roll.” They can’t lift most of the rocks, so they roll them.

They also joke about their Art in the Park. Remembering a smiley face in the Simi hills, they added some humor with rock smiley faces, a granite monument, and funny faces and decorations on the piles of rocks at the ends of the trail.

Talking to them, what comes across most is the joy they feel at the beach, working on their path and helping their community and environment. “It doesn’t feel like work to go down there…quiet, peaceful, like meditation…we feel rejuvenated….look forward to it every day…we plan on continuing as long as we can walk.”

“It’s been a wonderful experience.”

A family-friendly event, on Saturday, April 28th from 1- 3pm in celebration of the National Superhero Day. Superheroes come in all shapes and forms, but the one thing they all have in common is their commitment to saving lives and improving the way we live.

Snap a photo and a Meet & Greet with fictional look-a-likes such as Captain America and Wonder Woman, and meet real life local heroes who save lives and keep the community safe. The real-life Superheroes may not always have super powers or wear capes, but are great role models

Adults, kids, teens and families, and participants – are encouraged to dress up as their favorite Superheroes and post photos in their super hero outfit on social media using #NationalSuperheroDay and #VenturaHarbor.

Ventura Harbor Village is inviting lifeguards in uniform to bring their lifeguard truck and to talk about ocean safety and take photos with children. A fire truck will be parked nearby during the event and families will have the opportunity to meet local fire fighters.

On March 15th the American Cancer Society held a survivor dinner at the Wyndham Garden Pierpont Inn. On this night they honored cancer survivors and caregivers for the American Cancer Society and Relay for Life. The survivor dinner was a fun night that consisted of music, speakers, raffles, and a tasty meal.

American Cancer Society is second to the US government for funding cancer research and has funded 47 Nobel Prize winners through their grants. They have programs and services such as Look Good Feel Better, Road to Recovery, cancer.org with 24/7 live chat, and their 1-800-227-2345 number where you can speak to a cancer specialist 24/7, 365 days a year.

There will be the Relay For Life of Ventura and Ojai happening May 5th at Buena High School. This will be a 24-hour event starting at 10:00 am Saturday and ending at 10:00 am Sunday. During this event, we will celebrate those battling or who have beat cancer, remember those lost, and fight back to find a cure. Please join in at any time during those 24 hours to come and walk the track, listen to entertainment, or enjoy the activities. For more information please call 644-4237 or visit RelayForLife.org/VenturaCa.

by Victoria Usher

The Ventura College Foundation is accepting applications for its Ventura College Promise Grant Program, which will give nearly 1,000 Ventura County high school graduates their entire first year of Ventura College free of charge. The Ventura College Promise Grant Program encourages students to further their education and reach their academic goals. For the 2016/2017 academic year, the Promise Program served 946 students, providing $329,000 in financial assistance.

So far this year, the Foundation has received 744 applications for the Promise Program. “The Ventura College Promise Grant Program is unique. In addition to providing financial assistance, it removes many barriers to higher education and provides students with critical support, so that they can complete college,” said Ventura College Foundation’s Jaimee Hanna. “We connect students with health services, a food pantry, and academic counseling,” Hanna said. “In addition, the Foundation’s textbook lending program saves students hundreds of dollars.”

The Ventura College Promise Grant Program, launched during the 2005/2006 school year, and it was the first Promise Program offered in California. Students come from all over the county, the highest numbers coming from Oxnard, Santa Paula, and Ventura. Improving the college-going rate in the community is something that could be helpful in enhancing the quality of our local workforce.

The most popular areas of study for Promise students are nursing, business, psychology, and engineering. The Ventura College Foundation will be awarding a total of $48,400 in Phoenix Scholarships to re-entry students—individuals who must learn new skills and return to school to do so; or who have chosen to return to school after a break in education. Each recipient will receive a scholarship ranging from $500 to $5,000.

Phoenix Scholarship recipients are selected based on their academic goals and progress, along with their financial need. In its 19th year, the positive impact of the Phoenix Scholarship program is reflected in its results: 63 percent of recipients are first-generation college students, 33 percent are single parents and 63 percent are pursuing education and training in the growing health-related fields of nursing, paramedic and emergency medical technology (EMT). “Finding the money and the time to pay for and attend college when you’re already working a job and/or caring for a family requires commitment and sacrifice.

Often, re-entry students are part-time students and, therefore, do not qualify for most traditional scholarships or financial aid,” explained Anne King, Ventura College Foundation executive director. “The Phoenix Scholarship, by taking care of most of the student’s direct educational expenses, makes it possible for these students to continue their education, rather than abandoning their goals,” Ventura College Foundation Board Chair Rob van Nieuwburg said back in 1999. The Ventura College Foundation board members recognized there was an adult student population struggling to pay for college when they were already balancing school with working and caring for a family. “The board was inspired by these student’s tenacity to overcome personal challenges in order to attend school and upgrade their skills to make a better life for themselves and their families,” he said.

Villanova Preparatory School is celebrating their annual Wildcat Classic Golf Tournament and Dinner at Soule Park Golf Course in Ojai on Friday, May 4.

Registration 10:00 a.m. Tee Time 12:00 p.m. Feast Time 5:00 p.m.

Come join over 100 players in the annual golf tournament with a foursome, support the event as a sponsor, or just come enjoy the fiesta dinner and raffle. Families, friends, alumni, neighbors and public are all welcome! Call the school for information 646-1464 x126, or email [email protected].

This year, the Wildcat Classic goal is to raise over $20,000 to use towards athletics and scholarships. Like many educational establishments, they rely on the generosity of businesses and individuals from the community to assist in providing a quality education for the students.

As a donor to the event your name and/or business will be proudly listed on all event promotion materials for a large number of attendees to see.

Villanova is known for its sense of community and the involvement of its parents and supporters. The event promises to be an excellent opportunity to bring people together for a great cause and great fun.

Since its humble beginning in 1924, Villanova has flourished , Villanova graduates enjoy 100% acceptance to selective colleges and universities in the US and around the world.

Villanova Preparatory School is a non-profit organization exempt from federal income tax as a 501(c)3. All donations are tax deductible.