Edward Boss Prado Foundation helps charitable programs
Published in the July 6 – 19, 2016 issue of Morgan Hill Life
By Lauren Newcomb
Morgan Hill Life file photo
Cecelia Ponzini in Cecelia’s Closet. The nonprofit gives clothes to the needy for job interviews.
When Cecelia Ponzini unexpectedly lost her son Edward to heart failure in 2003, she was gripped with a burning desire to honor the young Morgan Hill man. She latched onto memories of his kind and giving nature. Those tender recollections eventually led her to start the Edward Boss Prado Foundation in his name.
With the help of the community, the Morgan Hill woman over the years built up charitable programs that have had a huge impact on the lives of thousands of people throughout the entire South Valley region. In 2011, Ponzini began the Share the Runway program. In 2012, she started the No Child Left Unfed program. And in 2013, she launched the Edward Boss Prado Foundation serving as an umbrella nonprofit organization dedicated to various charitable programs.
The foundation has grown to provide resources helping children and families in Morgan Hill, San Martin and Gilroy.
Ponzini’s philanthropic activities started off with her giving food and clothing away for years from her home. When her husband Gary suggested moving the operation to a small property they owned, Ponzini seized the opportunity to grow her operation.
“I saw a vision of what it could be,” she said. “I realized then that people really are giving.”
Volunteers pose after accepting and wrapping Christmas gifts for elementary school students in 2015.
Morgan Hill Life file photo
She decided to loan prom dresses to girls who couldn’t afford them and make them feel special on one of the biggest social events in their high school years. When she put the idea on her Facebook page, 500 dresses were donated by local residents. So Ponzini went to Sobrato High School and offered to dry clean the dresses after they’d been used. The program worked. She did the same for Live Oak High School. The Share the Runway program was thus born.
Following the success of Share the Runway, Ponzini decided to start the No Child Left Unfed program. It stemmed from a special memory she had of her son when he asked if he could bring extra food for one of his high school buddies who never seemed to have any lunch. Edward was extremely generous, she said.
The elementary schools already had a free lunch program in place to feed children in need, but Ponzini wasn’t sure what the high schools offered.
“I asked what happens to the kids who don’t have lunch, and they said they don’t give them lunch,” she said. “Today, the kids can get in line and ask for lunch and they’ll get it, no questions asked.”
The program takes the cost of the lunch out of a check the school receives from the foundation at the beginning of the year. If the funds run out, Ponzini sends another check.
Another program Ponzini developed is called Walking with Dignity. At P.A. Walsh STEAM Academy one day, she noticed several children were wearing sandals even though it was raining. She knew parents would send children out in the wet in sandals only if they had no other shoes to wear.
That’s how Walking with Dignity was born. Ponzini purchases gift cards to shoe stores and gives them to the school for the children who need footwear. Teachers can check out the gift cards and give them to the parents of the children in need — no questions asked. The foundation never finds out the children’s or the parents’ names, and the schools don’t keep records of the recipients. They just record the classroom and the child’s gender, Ponzini said.
Photo courtesy Edward Boss Prado Foundation
Above: Staff of the Morgan Hill Unified School District show their support for Cecelia’s Closet.
A common thread connecting all of the foundation’s programs is the philosophy of “no questions asked.” For Ponzini, this is a crucial aspect of the Prado Foundation’s activities. It originates from the days when she was a young mother of 19 with four children and her first husband was in prison. “I ended up on welfare, on food stamps. It was really hard,” she said. “It was very degrading to walk to the store, and only be able to buy milk and not deodorant.”
The degradation Ponzini felt during this time is what many people in dire financial situations also feel, she said. Asking for charity or accepting handouts is humiliating, but many parents often have to do it for their children’s survival.
The anonymity of the foundation’s programs and its “no questions asked” policy is meant to avert that humiliation and restore some dignity to people in life-challenging situations. Even now, Ponzini will come home from the supermarket with two or three deodorants. “It’s like a scar,” she explained. “It won’t go away.” And she doesn’t want anyone else to feel that humiliation.
Another reason the foundation adheres to the its privacy policy is because some people who are in need might hesitate to come forward if invasive questions are being asked.
“No one wants to ask for charity,” Ponzini said. But she wants them to feel secure enough to accept the help that the foundation offers through its various programs.
For Ponzini, the most powerful memory that tied in with the Walking with Dignity program is that of one day finding her son Edward sitting on the floor of the kitchen scrubbing his sneakers with a dishcloth.
“He said, ‘I’m trying to clean my tennies!’ That made me really sad,” Ponzini recalls.
Today, the Edward Boss Prado Foundation is flourishing. Cecelia’s Closet and Food Pantry is one of its more best-known programs, with many people throughout the South Valley showing their support by pitching in and giving generously.
When Ponzini first told her charitable idea to her husband Gary, he suggested she just take a check and go to Costco and buy food rather than asking around town for donations.
“I said, ‘If I do that, then nobody knows what we’re trying to do.’ So I went to CalFire, and they said absolutely, and then I went to the Centennial Recreation Center, and they said absolutely,” she said. The whole community helped get her going with the canned goods, and she is grateful for their support.
Ponzini isn’t alone in managing the foundation’s operations. Ken and Connie Murray, John Horner, and Michelle McKay serve on the board of directors with Ponzini, and she is very glad for their guidance.
“I have ideas,” she said, “but they’re the ones who help me execute them.”
Ken Murray began volunteering for the foundation when his wife Connie persuaded him to join her at the “Fit for Fall” back-to-school event where new and gently-used clothing is given to elementary students. He thought he would just be volunteering for that one day. But seeing the children’s faces light up when they got to choose their own school wardrobe struck a chord.
“You watch these kids, and they’re exuberant,” Murray said. “That’s when I decided to join. And it’s not about me or about Cecelia. It’s about being able to serve those kids.”
Horner first met Cecelia while working on a mutual project. He admired her style of leading by example and emphasizing preserving people’s dignity at every turn.
“You never get the sense that there’s anything Cecelia wants out of this personally other than to fill some of these voids she feels and try to honor something that can never be made sense of,” he said.
For Connie Murray, the thing that drew her to Cecelia Ponzini was the woman’s intense drive to help others. “Her passion is contagious — you just want to be a part of it,” she said. “It’s one of those wonderful feelings after you’ve served people or folded bag upon bag of clothes — it’s a good feeling.”
Moving forward, Ponzini and the Prado Foundation’s board of directors have come up with many ideas about which direction to go to help children in the region. Their main goal, however, is to expand access to Cecelia’s Closet and Food Pantry and other programs. If the closet were open for more than one day a week, Ken Murray said, it would reach more people.
The Edward Boss Prado Foundation also intends to expand its HOPE (Homeless Outreach through Police and Partnership Efforts) program. It stocks every patrol car in the Morgan Hill Police Department with a care package containing clothing, a hygiene kit, water, food items, a warm blanket and an envelope with seven dollars.
The Foundation aspires to expand the HOPE program to include San Martin and other unincorporated land served by the Santa Clara County Sheriff’s Department as well as to the Gilroy Police Department.
With an indomitable will, Cecelia Ponzini constantly moves forward, her mind alight with new ideas and possibilities for the foundation dedicated to her son’s memory. The board of directors is unanimous in the belief that many South Valley families are truly lucky she created the Edward Boss Prado Foundation as a selfless outlet for her grief.
People sometimes ask Ponzini when the programs will end. She tells them, “Never!’”
Her eyes sparkle with a smile. “I’m afraid if I stopped, my life would end,” she said. “It’s very painful when you lose a child, and so you keep trying to think of things to do. For me, all these people we help are in plain sight. We need to try to see them because they are humans too.”
