Co-op Camp Sierra's Sponsor:
Interpersonal Developmental Facilitators, Inc.
 

IDF is a 501(c)(3) Tax-Exempt Organization. Donations to Co-op Camp are tax deductable.

IDF Main Office: Pasadena, CA
Executive Director: Dorothea Bradley

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  Dorothea Bradley

Credits:

Profile: Traude Gomez
Photo: Brian Biery

This photo of Dorothea Bradley
and the profile featured below are reproduced here with permission from "Power of One" published 2003 by Inspiring Minds.
 
Dorothea Bradley .has the remarkable ability to look beneath exteriors to see the inner light that shines from within us all. This ability has made her friends all over town, from all walks of life, many of whom have helped in her community efforts. As a large, black woman Dorothea knows what prejudice, racism, and sexism look and feel like. She also knows that if you take the time to look deep within a person, you will find beauty. "You never know, hiding in there may be the grandest friend you've ever had." she says. "But if you worry how that friend looks, you may never get a grand friend."
......Dorothea also has the natural ability to surround herself with grand friends helping her to help others, while ultimately helping themselves. She has used this skill to start a community garden in an abandoned field, to organize block parties, and most notably, to feed the hungry. Dorothea is best known in Pasadena for her long-running food program, which she started in 1981 and ran at times from her home. Serving especially the disabled and handicapped, the program was run entirely by volunteers, as many as forty at once, who pitched in to feed as many as 3,000 people weekly.
......The program began shortly after Dorothea returned from a trip to Africa. "I was in the Social Security office, and a woman said, 'I'm a school teacher, and I don't have any money to buy food,'" she explains. "Another lady said the same thing. I said, 'Give me five dollars, and I'll go buy food.' That's how the food program began."
......Dorothea had already been diagnosed with arthritis of the spine, a condition that made her reliant on a wheelchair, but she decided not to let this stop her. Dorothea herself drove her van or a rented truck to the food warehouses, to farmers and produce markets, amassing what she could. Boxes were packed and distributed from her living room on Wednesdays. She was never far from her dog, a Bouvier named Somebody Very Special, or simply Somebody. Dorothea was also rarely without her upbeat disposition and cackling laughter.
......The food program eventually became a nonprofit corporation called Interpersonal Developmental Facilitators, Inc., with the idea that unemployed and handicapped people would help and support one another. Dorothea received federal grants from a HUD program to pay for expenses and for an administrative assistant, though as the executive director she never was paid. She received a presidential award for community service from then-President Ronald Reagan, but this didn't make the going easy. Eventually she was evicted from her home because a neighbor objected to her house being a distribution center. HUD stopped funding the program in the '90s, and so Dorothea continued, soliciting donations herself, but she found the going tough. "Nobody was interested in donating to the hungry because AIDS programs were the big thing then," she says. For a time, Dorothea and her volunteers could be found distributing food in front of the Community Health Alliance of Pasadena on Saturday mornings.
......The food program wound down in 2002, in part because Dorothea underwent heart surgery. Still never far from Somebody and with her optimism and cackling laughter still intact, Dorothea has recovered form the operation. She says of her life work, "I was giving other people something from my heart. Some people don't know how to share, while my heart bleeds for people without enough to eat."