Page 26 | Pacific Sun | Marin County, California

Giving Back: Vulnerable Youth Provide Holiday Help for Unhoused People

Nikki Silverstein

Nov 25, 2025

Giving Back: Vulnerable Youth Provide Holiday Help for Unhoused People

A youth group has decided to forego their annual holiday party to provide pasta meals, socks, warm clothes and more to scores of homeless people in Marin on Thanksgiving eve. Even more remarkable—the young people face their own challenges.

Ranging in age from 16 to 25, the Leadership Youth Team is part of Ambassadors of Hope and Opportunity (AHO), a local nonprofit serving at-risk and homeless teens and young adults. Together with AHO alumni and volunteers, they will prepare 200 pasta meals and care packages and then distribute the goods to homeless camps across Marin.

Stops include Hamilton and Binford Road in Novato and various sites in San Rafael. They won’t just make deliveries to sanctioned encampments. The AHO teens, young adults and alumni have lived experience on the streets and know where homeless people live under the radar.

The idea came from the team, who became concerned about those with food insecurity after the federal government announced its shutdown and loss of SNAP food benefits. Team members recalled their hard times before finding AHO, when they were hungry or struggling. From there, it was an easy decision to trade in their tree-trimming party for a day of offering to others.

“This project just highlights who they are as people,” said Zara Babitzke, AHO’s founder and director. “They want to help other people because they saw how we have helped them, and they want to give back now that they’re stabilized and doing well.”

AHO helps almost 300 young people a year, including newcomers to the program and those with ongoing needs, according to Babitzke. Support doesn’t necessarily stop after a participant reaches age 26; the agency provides services when needed.

Services are comprehensive and personalized. Housing, employment and dental needs are the top three reasons that youth have reached out to AHO for the past 22 years. Through a network of more than 200 partners, AHO can help with those needs and much more. Providing medical care, legal aid, trauma counseling, cell phones, laptops, post office boxes and a two-week wardrobe are all in a day’s work.

For their part, program participants developed and are guided by AHO’s three principles. The first, showing up, means being on time and ready to work, followed by staying in communication and keeping one’s word.

Alumni help mentor new people on the program and its principles. Coming from a similar background goes a long way to build trust with a young person let down in the past by adults and mainstream institutions.

To help gain the confidence of a youth reaching out for help, Babitzke answers every phone call and text the same day. And she meets them within 24 to 48 hours in a café to share a meal and listen to what they need.

Makiaya, 21, lived in her unreliable Fiat when she called AHO and first met with Babitzke earlier this year. After that meeting in a local restaurant, Makiaya’s life trajectory changed.

“Zara said she could help me get into a shelter, and she did,” Makiaya said. “She’s my safe haven. Zara gave me back hope.”

Babitzke says she created a partnership with Makiaya to help her find a new path. Partnering is an important aspect of the AHO program because Babitzke doesn’t believe in case management.

“Youth are not cases, and we’re not about to manage them,” Babitzke said. “Because our culture is so personalized and immediately supportive, many youth feel like we’re the family they never had because we’re there for them unconditionally.”

The approach has certainly proved successful for Makiaya, who now lives in transitional age youth housing in San Rafael. She even has her own bedroom, a benefit she treasures after her time sleeping in a car and sharing a room with others in a busy shelter.

Part of AHO’s Youth Leadership Team, Makiaya helped spearhead the project to feed homeless people on Thanksgiving eve. It wasn’t long ago when she worried about where her next meal would come from. And she’s excited about giving back.

“I’ve always shared, even when I didn’t have much,” she said.

James Hayes, an AHO alumnus, is also eager to distribute the pasta meals, socks, warm clothing and hygiene kits to the homeless community. For him, it’s about showing appreciation.

“I owe the world the patience that it’s given me,” Hayes said. “So now I want to be able to give back. Gratitude is not just taking and saying thank you. Gratitude is giving back.”

And Hayes has much to be grateful for, he says. Babitzke started AHO after she met him and learned he was falling through the cracks of the group home system, where he was raised. At 18, a transitional age youth, he was sent out on his own without much preparation. He didn’t know how to balance a checkbook or get health care. In short order, he became homeless.

“I just didn’t have any life skills, you know, things that your parents would normally teach you,” Hayes said.

Babitzke was about to teach him those skills when the nonprofit program she worked for in San Rafael lost its government funding. Not able to abandon Hayes and other similarly situated youths, she scraped together non-government funding to launch AHO. Hayes was her first participant.

For several years, AHO provided services to help support him. When he had a terrible toothache, Babitzke helped him see a dentist for a tooth extraction—entirely at no charge.

Today, at age 42, Hayes is a father and has his own home in Petaluma. He also remains very active with AHO, participating with the Youth Leadership Team, sharing his experiences and helping support their projects.

How AHO helped him move past his trauma and obstacles remains top of mind. It was, he says, a monumental endeavor that Babitzke and AHO undertook with him. And they have done so for thousands of other young people, with the support of community partners, volunteers and alumni like Hayes.

On Thanksgiving eve, some of those youth will be giving back by nurturing homeless people with a meal and care package. It’s all part of AHO’s culture and principles.

“We’re basically wanting to show our love and caring for people by doing this,” Babitzke said.

Celebrating Differences, Larkspur Author’s ‘Multicolored Monono’

Nina Schmidt

Nov 25, 2025

Celebrating Differences, Larkspur Author’s ‘Multicolored Monono’

Just in time for National Adoption Month, Larkspur author Nicole Todd Bailey is introducing young readers to Multicolored Monono, a new picture book released this past September that draws on her and her children’s experiences as a multiracial adoptive family.

This book tells the story of a unique, multicolored crayon who longs to fit in but faces unkindness and exclusion from the other crayons in the classroom, all of which belong to matching sets. Aimed at children ages 5–10, Multicolored Monono offers young readers new ways to think about difference, and encourages them to let their true colors shine.

The process of writing Multicolored Monono was a collaborative one, with Bailey’s two teenage children, Amara, 16, adopted from Ethiopia, and Kai, 15, adopted from the Marshall Islands, serving not only as inspiration for the book, but also as active advisors throughout the drafting process. Amara and Kai reviewed Bailey’s drafts “line by line” and provided input on illustrations. One area where they were particularly adamant: The book should not suggest that being different was easy.

“Many children’s books … have a rose-colored, neatly packaged resolution at the end,” Bailey said. “Ours offers hope for ‘brighter days ahead’ but avoids the false hope that everything can be fixed easily.”

The family has lived this reality firsthand. Experiencing exclusion, insensitivity and hurt from children and adults alike, Bailey watched her children grapple with challenges, cultivating courage and resilience in the process. “I would listen to their heartbreak at night,” she said, “then watch them get up the next morning, dig deep … and go back out into the world with hopes that the new day would be different—much like Monono.”

While some of these challenges arose from being a multiracial adoptive family, Bailey emphasizes that Amara and Kai’s struggles stemmed primarily from being people of color in communities where they were in the minority—first in Singapore, and then in Larkspur, where they have lived since 2021. “Multicolored Monono is not a book specifically about adoption,” Bailey said. “It is a book about children’s desire to be seen as they are and be included—reflecting the experiences, reactions and emotions of children who are noticeably different from their peers.”

Using the metaphor of a differently colored crayon, Bailey hopes to allow children of many identities to see themselves in Monono, “whether that difference is due to skin color, physical attributes, neurodiversity, gender or sexual identity, citizenship or family structure.” Bailey’s son, Kai, helped to take this even further, recommending that the author omit pronouns in the story to make it more inclusive, a suggestion which ended up in the final draft.

Though the book celebrates resilience, Bailey acknowledges that personal strength must be balanced with community support, which is not always readily available. Many people are “simply too busy or too comfortable or too unwilling to adjust for just one family,” Bailey said. Monono encounters this challenge in the book, navigating a community that seems friendly and supportive at first, but whose momentum only carries them so far, falling short of overcoming what Bailey’s Kirkus reviewer described as “unthinking insularity.”

Amid the complexity of difference and identity, Multicolored Monono is ultimately a story of resilience. “My children, and most marginalized children, have a strength beyond their years that develops out of necessity,” Bailey said. “This is what gives them the resilience to go back out and keep trying.”

‘Multicolored Monono’ is available on Amazon, Barnes & Noble and Bookshop.org, which donates a portion of purchases to local bookstores based on zip code. Bailey will also make several school visits in Marin County in early 2026. More information on the author can be found at laneofourown.com.

Lights Out: ‘Wait Until Dark’ at Ross Valley Players

Caitlin Strom-Martin

Nov 24, 2025

Lights Out: ‘Wait Until Dark’ at Ross Valley Players

I can offer two compelling reasons to go see the Ross Valley Players’ production of the cat and mouse thriller, Wait Until Dark.

Adapted by Jeffrey Hatcher from the original script by Frederick Knott (running through Dec. 14 in The Barn Theatre at the Marin Art and Garden Center), the reasons are Tina Traboulsi and David Yen.

Wait Until Dark is probably best recalled for the 1967 film adaptation starring Audrey Hepburn as Susy, who finds herself facing off against a group of nasty criminals.

Director Carl Jordan has cast his two leads well, and rounds out the small ensemble with some other excellent work by Rob Garcia (who steals moments with merely a gum wrapper as slimeball Carlino) and David Abrams (who creates lovely chemistry with Traboulsi as the charming Mike).

Both the set by Tom O’Brien and the costumes by Valera Coble are full of beautiful accents, like the old refrigerator and sinkboard, and Susy’s muted clothing set against a red interior basement apartment replete with ominous street-facing windows.

Traboulsi gives a believable portrayal of Susy, who, although having recently become blind, can intuit the ever increasing peril she’s in with razor sharp clarity and who has the bravery and tenacity to meet it head-on. This is a subtle performance, and Traboulsi inhabits her impediment with a grounded, unshowy feel, while affecting the vocal tones of Hollywood’s Golden Age actresses. Susy is nobody’s fool, and one is rooting for her from the first scene.

Yen plays Harry Roat, a depraved criminal with a penchant for costumes, accents and theatrics. He looks formidable and imposing on the low-ceiling Barn stage, and clearly relishes the chance to play a predator. Taking his time with an exposition-heavy opening scene, he builds the terrible characteristics of Roat by savoring each moment.

The lighting design by Frank Sarubbi is key to the story, and feels like a built-in character towards the finale. And the execution of said design was precise and basically perfect.

The only qualms I had were that the pace was a tad languid for a thriller, and the sound design, by Billie Cox, was a bit of an afterthought—randomly inserted and not very necessary if the pace, and therefore motivations and stakes for our characters, would have been maximized.

Still, for some clever performances, Dark is worth one’s time.

‘Wait Until Dark’ runs through Dec. 14 at the Barn Theatre in the Marin Art and Garden Center, 30 Sir Francis Drake Blvd., Ross. Thurs.–Sat., 7:30pm; Sun., 2pm. $30–$45. 415.456.9555. rossvalleyplayers.com.