Former MLB player gives back to Imperial Valley

IMPERIAL, Calif.- After playing 24 years of professional baseball for nine different teams and 13 major organizations and being a 2008 World Series champion for the Philadelphia Phillies, Imperial Valley native Rudy Seanez returned to his home to help inspire young and old alike. “I’ve always lived here. This is home. I grew up in Brawley. My family is here, so that was factor number one,” said Seanez in an interview at his Seanez Sports Academy.

The real assets in Calexico High’s ASSETs program

CALEXICO, Calif.–Jovan Rojas had a lot of trouble making friends on his high school campus. For a lot of adolescents, painful insecurities can be a repellant to their peers. “I was not very mature and had problems socializing with anyone,” said Rojas, now 18 and a senior at Calexico High School. “After joining the program I have felt improvement in myself and I am told from tutors that I have improved a lot.”

That program, the After School Safety and Enrichment for Teens, or ASSETs, a grant-based project provided under the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 and administered by California’s 21st Century Community Learning Centers program, was launched at Calexico High in February 2010 with a five-year $1.5 million grant. ASSETs is aimed at involving latchkey kids, or at-risk teens who have no place to go and nothing to do when that final school bell rings for the day.

Life–or Death–In the Salton Sea

WESTMORLAND, Calif.–About 40 miles north of the Mexican border in southeastern California is a large, salt-water lake known to the world as the Salton Sea.  It is the largest inland sea in the world, and the saltiest. Originally a small piece of ancient Lake Cahuilla, the Salton Basin is about 380 square miles and ranges in depth to a maximum of 51 feet.  In 1905, dams used to diverge the Colorado River failed, flooding the basin without stopping until 1907.  Since then the sea has been fed by natural runoff from surrounding mountains and agricultural irrigation. Throughout the last 100 years, the sea has had periods of shrinking and expanding shorelines along with large die-offs of fish and fowl, creating a reputation for the lake as a “dead sea” in the public’s eye.  Part of the blame lies with rising salinity in the water, which is currently 10 times saltier than the Pacific Ocean. Along the shoreline is the Sonny Bono Salton Sea National Wildlife Refuge–2,200 acres of freshwater marshlands and home to more than 460 species of birds.  The Salton Sea’s salty waters are the refuge’s habitat. Dozens of proposals over the last 20 years to “fix” the Salton Sea have gone no where.

Imperial Valley fights high hunger rates

EL CENTRO, Calif. – Sitting among the hundred or so people in the large hall at Christ Community Church’s Kitchen with a Mission, Wade Hensley, 45, and Eva Morales, 32, wait at a round table littered with half-full plastic cups of red-colored punch, with their 6-month-old daughter cradled in Eva’s arms and their three other kids playing in a room next door. This is a typical Friday evening for Hensley and Morales, a common-law couple of seven years, who were once homeless for six months, then lived in an RV for almost two years before renting an apartment just down the street from the church that they frequent every week because feeding a family of six on food stamps isn’t enough. “We run out of food sometimes,” said Hensley who is disabled with a herniated disc in his back. “We just have to budget for it.”

Friday meals, weekly hot lunches and holiday dinners are among the services utilized by 21,000 Imperial Valley residents who are hungry.  However, the Imperial Valley Food Bank estimates that local food insecurity affects about 50,000 people, roughly 31 percent of the county’s population; and the numbers have nearly tripled since 2008.

Imperial Valley has its first film and art festival

EL CENTRO, Calif.–A new and different kind of life was breathed into the abandoned Anchor Blue store in the Imperial Valley Mall over the weekend. Where teen togs once filled the retail space, the Imperial Valley’s first-ever film and art festival took place. The Inaugural Imperial Valley Film Festival & Artist Showcase featured works by artists who live in or were raised in the Imperial Valley. All films were produced by valley residents or were shot in the valley by independent directors. Most of the art was heavily influenced by the experiences of living near a depressed border.