“A Hand Up”

“People Helping People is about an outpouring of generosity from community people volunteering to help people in the community,” says the nonprofit’s CEO, Valerie Kissell. 

Santa Ynez-based People Helping People (PHP) was founded 30 years ago as a grassroots effort of community leaders to distribute emergency food to the needy in the Valley. Then, it operated that one program with a budget of $45,000. The organization has now grown to 19 programs with a budget of $2.6 million, solving many of the varied and disparate needs of Valley residents.

From mental wellness, alcohol and drug prevention, healthcare and insurance, to housing insecurity and homelessness, People Helping People has unified under one roof almost any public assistance residents of the Santa Ynez Valley might need. If there’s a service they don’t already provide, they invite other agencies that do to come there and provide it. 

“Most people are only one crisis away from help,” Kissell says. “Each case is so different, so there’s not a cookie-cutter approach for us. For someone it might just be, ‘my car broke down, I need $600, I can’t get it fixed, I need to get to work.’” 

People Helping People will take care of that expense, as Kissell says, “with dignity and respect, because nobody who comes through these doors should ever feel that it’s a handout.” 

People commonly think of the Santa Ynez Valley for its wineries and acclaimed restaurants, but beneath is a community in need. Many of the owners of those businesses are tremendous supporters of People Helping People, but as PHP Director of Development and Communications Erica Flores notes, “I have delivered groceries to cooks and waiters of those restaurants.” Those establishments depend upon a thriving working class to run smoothly and sustainably. 

“You can’t have the wonderful, successful restaurants in the Valley without them being built through the hard work, the sweat, the sacrifices of an immigrant population, a working class, and multiple families living under one roof,” Flores says. 

And Flores knows this firsthand. A fourth-generation Santa Ynez Valley native, she left a successful career as a fundraiser for Chico State to return to the Valley. But, because of economic conditions in the area and the pandemic, she wasn’t able to find her footing upon her return. Finally landing a fundraising job paying $18 per hour, she still fell $100 short of just making rent. 

“Here I was, the single mom of an infant and driving to Lompoc for social services,” she says. “I had never had to navigate the government agencies before, and to do that while trying to breastfeed and change diapers and travel and have some type of sanity.” The first time Flores walked into People Helping People was to attend her “Women, Infants and Children” appointment, a public assistance program for people like Erica, a struggling single mother. 

“People Helping People was that bridge that got my feet underneath me, that allowed me to choose self-sustainability for my daughter and it was here in the community that I was born and raised,” Flores says. 

She is now the organization’s director of development. She attributes that success not just to the aid that PHP provided, but to the core spirit with which it comes: “it’s not a hand out, it’s a hand up,” she says.