“An educated citizenry is a vital requisite for our survival as a free people.”- Thomas Jefferson
Education can be the great leveler and elevate community through access, inclusion, and social justice to ensure our demography does not determine our destiny.
Instead of crass consumers, we can create informed citizens that make smart choices and contribute to the wellbeing and benefit of society, not to mention social mobility.
To that end, Mission Fed is excited to offer two sponsorship opportunities supporting education and youth across San Diego County, and we would love your help spreading the word. Applying takes less than 10 minutes!
Note: Applications are due November 20, 2026, at 5:00 p.m.
Mission for Education
Public K-12 school districts in San Diego County can apply for up to $5,000 in sponsorship funding to support programs and initiatives benefiting students, educators, families, and school communities.
Mission Fed is also supporting San Diego County organizations serving youth through sports, music, arts, STEM, robotics, leadership development, and other youth-focused programs. Applications are due November 20, 2026 at 5:00 p.m.
This week, after keeping my blog https://soulfoodfriday.com/home/ alive and kicking every week since 2013, birthed in a personal commitment to putting positive energy out into the universe, and while generally sharing clips or links, other than transformative personal experiences like visiting San Quentin, or experiencing life-changing experiences in other dimensions, I chose a different tack and wanted to connect the dots on experiences in my life over the last two weeks that hopefully will trigger some reflection and action in yours.
From my perspective there seems to be a recurring theme and thread, and I fully recognize humans are meaning makers and can create meaning out of anything, so its up to you to discern if this worthy of your time or simply a construct of my own conditionโฆ
Links to all groups referenced follow at the end, in case you want to explore them further as they all do important work in our community and could benefit from support from you be that amplification, consideration, or remuneration.
It begins Oct 5th with the San Diego Food System Alliance conference on Nourishment, related to their Food Vision 2030.
In the spirit of teaching a person to fish v. feeding a person a fish, I liken the SDFSA to creating a whole new fishery, leveraging our local farms, indigenous wisdom, and a collaborative and sustainable model to address the rapidly rising food insufficiency challenges in our county.
Here, I was initiated into the concept of Rematriation. Unlike repatriation, rematriation is the sacred and political process of returning (Indigenous) peoples, ancestral lands, sacred items, and traditional knowledge to a state of balance with Mother Earth, and unlike traditional “repatriation“, which often treats the return of items or land as a bureaucratic, legal, or patriarchal transaction, Rematriation focuses on restoring living, respectful kinship relationships with land, water, and culture.
I will temper myself and make no mention of Super El Nino, firestorms and other conditions that unequivocally demonstrate we are out of touch with mother nature and have really pissed her off!
Oct 5: The same evening, I served as one of many cohosts for The Balboa Park Table, a large scale gathering to connect local leaders and residents at a 500-person table with the goal of fostering human-to human connection across different neighborhoods, industries, and backgrounds rather than networking for titles, transactions and titillation.
This was an opportunity for all of us to recognize that our roles are not our identities and appreciate how difficult it is in our culture to connect when unmasking our professional faรงades and try just being v., the human doing. I was introduced to this aspiration through the SD Chamber of Connection, that is striving to address the loneliness epidemic that the Surgeon General has identified and help us create those social connections that are so critical to our wellbeing right here in our community.
Oct 8, I was at the SD Rescue Missionโs Presidentโs Council Dinner where we honored the 30+ graduates of the program that had invested in themselves to getting off the streets and enlivening their better selves with faith, hope, and love not to mention resources from the SDRM. Homelessness is San Diegoโs #1 issue according to the Nonprofit Institutes data and it does take a village to address this issue with wrap around services to help our neighbors get off the streets.
Donโt judge. But for the grace of God go Iโฆ
October 10, I intended to be at the Fundamental Health Brunchwith a View but need to focus on family stuff. Fundamental Health is a nonprofit that believes access to mental healthcare is a fundamental right and break down financial barriers and improve access to quality mental health services for all. Mental health is widely described as a crisis in San Diego County, driven by high demand, severe staffing shortages, and an overwhelmed care and hospital system, not to mention the stigma that crosses all socio-economic strata.
Please know, remember, and share that Itโs OK not to be OK!
Bear with meโฆ
Oct 11, I played tennis in the SES Charity Tournament that supports athletes who donโt have access to opportunity in TJ as well as the Empty Cradle, a 100% volunteer-led 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization that provides free comfort, peer support, and resources to families experiencing pregnancy or infant loss (miscarriage, stillbirth, SIDS, SUID, TFMR, or infant death). Roughly 1 in 4 women experience a miscarriage in their lifetime and as one of those families we know firsthand the pain this creates and leaves behind.
Oct 16, we attended a funeral and celebration of life for a dear family friend that we have known since our first months in the US. Here we were reminded of the importance of making space at your table for recently arriving immigrants plus the power of making music โthe vernacular of the soulโ. Breaking bread and making music together are soul filling and heart-warming experiences and we remain indebted to the Lobo family for their graciousness and hospitality when we came to the US with one suitcase each in the โ70s, thanks to the immense courage of my parents that chose to forsake certainty and a cushy life in India and instead came to the US to try to make a better life for their children. I would be lying if I didnโt confess to revisiting immigration in the context of the AMERICAN DREAM in current timesโฆ
Oct 17, I test positive for Covid. (I am negative now) And while fully vaccinated followed the protocol and isolated while I let the infection run its course. I elected to complete my binge watching of Kurosawa movies (yes, all the Samurai ones because of my martial arts proclivity, but they were mostly โrun throughโ in September on a vacation in Hawaii), so now I watched Red Beard, a 1965 Japanese period drama film about a doctor and his trainee, exploring propriety and purpose, poverty and privilege, that is as relevant today as it was when it was made, all on a meager budget of $650,000 dollars.
I also finally embarked on the Lord of the Rings series where fellowship in the battle between good and evil is an important ingredient (made to the tune of $93MM dollars in 2001 by the way). Akira Kurusawa was influenced by many of the early Western directors and in turn influenced a generation of future directors including George Lucas with Star Wars, Francis Ford Coppola and The Godfather, Steven Spielberg, Sergio Leone and A Fistful of Dollars and Martin Scorsese to name a few.
History does not repeat itself, but it does rhyme, and Kurosawa Sensei is sublime!
When not sleeping or binge watching, I finally finished reading, Theo of Golden, the #1 best-selling novel by Allen Levi that is delicious, uplifting and at the same time heartbreaking.
Here I finally get to the punch line of this missive in his reference on page 295. โShe had read, just last week, of a study done by Harvard researchers. Young people were asked if their parents would rather they be kind or wealthy. The overwhelming majority had chosen the latter.โ
So, friends, as you prepare for today or this week, or the rest of your life, to quote Gandalf in The Lord of the Rings, โAll we have to decide is what t do with the time that is given usโ
What will you do with yours?
Take Action:
Might you find some time to support those furthest from opportunity?
Can you invest an hour or two in causes that matter to you? What is YOUR cause?
Would you live your values by joining the kindness-certified movement as an individual or an organization, where our goal is 250 new participants as we celebrate the USAโs 250th anniversary?
I get nothing out of this other than the comfort that others genuinely care about a kinder, gentler, more empathetic America
How To Trust Your Gut Without Ignoring Neuroscience
Exceptional Leadership Comes Down to 1 Surprisingly Human Behavior
I Stopped Doing These 7 Things to Feel Less Stressedโand the Difference Was Almost Immediate
How To Trust Your Gut Without Ignoring Neuroscience:
A gut feeling is not the opposite of science. It is your nervous system’s summary of pattern recognition. Here’s how to know when to trust intuition and when to analyze.
Exceptional Leadership Comes Down to 1 Surprisingly Human Behavior:
After decades of studying leadership and coaching leaders, one behavior continues to separate truly human leaders from everyone else. In my research and work over the last two decades as an executive coach, Iโve talked with CEOs, thought leaders, authors, and psychologists in search of an answer to a deceptively simple question: What makes a truly exceptional leader, and what do great leaders do to build great cultures? One answer keeps rising to the surface.
Comedy wildlife photography award finalists 2026 โ in pictures:
A selection of the Nikon Comedy Wildlife Awards 2026 finalists โ from a shortlist featuring a caiman wearing a wig, a leopard doing a handstand, a strutting white-tailed eagle and a polar bear appearing to chat and moreโฆ
โI could watch them forever.โ This adorable clip will give your soul a boost:
Puffins spend the entire winter out at sea โ but visitors to their breeding colonies can watch their adorable antics during spring and summer. October 2, 2026 Sometimes all you need is a dose of cuteness to brighten up your day โ and puffins are, arguably, one of the cutest birds around. These pint-sized โsea parrotsโ, as theyโre sometimes called, donโt even need to do anything to melt hearts.
โOur capacity to choose is only as meaningful as our capacity to notice.
We can’t choose differently if we can’t see what we’re already choosing:
our habits, our reactions, the stories we tell, the ways we move toward and away from one another.โ
โ Eric K.
Are We Listening?
Nova the Prescient Dog:
An airport security dog refused to allow an elderly passenger to board her plane, repeatedly planting herself in front of the traveler until her handler realized the real danger was something no scan could catch.
Nova had served nearly six years as a certified detection dog at the busy airport.
Her training was exact: when she detected a target scent, she sat down on the spotโno barking, no lunging, just an unmistakable signal. Her handler, Officer Reyes, trusted her judgment without question.
That morning, Nova abruptly cut across the concourse and sat directly in the path of a grandmother walking toward her gate.
Reyes followed standard protocol and requested an immediate secondary inspection. The passenger, clearly flustered and embarrassed, cooperated fully, repeating that she was only carrying her handbag and a small carry-on roller.
The inspection came back entirely clear. No prohibited materials, no traces of residue.
Reyes offered a polite apology and cleared her to proceed to boarding.
Nova, however, refused to break character.
She stepped right back into the womanโs way and sat down a second time, anchoring herself firmly to the floor.
In six years on the force, Reyes had never seen his partner signal twice on someone whose baggage had just cleared a thorough check.
His gut told him not to walk away.
Crouching down beside the passenger, Reyes gently asked if she was feeling well.
That simple question broke the barrier; visibly pale, she admitted she had been experiencing a heavy tightness in her chest and shortness of breath since arriving at the terminal. She had assumed it was merely severe anxiety from flying alone for the very first time since losing her late husband.
Reyes didnโt hesitate. He called for an on-site paramedic team on priority status.
Responders found her blood oxygen levels dangerously depleted and rushed her straight to the airport clinic for immediate stabilization.
Emergency physicians later confirmed she was in the critical opening stages of a massive cardiac eventโone that would have almost certainly turned fatal once airborne at cruising altitude, miles away from a runway.
Nova had never received an hour of medical alert training.
To this day, Reyes cannot explain scientifically how a dog trained purely for security threats recognized that while the passengerโs bags carried nothing dangerous, her heart was running out of time.
She missed her flight that morningโand gained a lifetime of journeys ahead.
The scanners found nothing. The officers found nothing.
But Nova knew something was wrongโand she refused to move until someone listenedโฆ
Will You Be One of 250?
America just turned 250. Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness were always meant to include kindness. Without it, freedom is just isolation, and happiness is just noise.
I’m asking you to help write the next chapter.
Join Kindness Certified Companies, a Kids for Peace program already reaching 45,000+ schools in 123 countries and put your values on display.
Certification is simple: a small tax-deductible donation, a seal for your website, and a spot among 300+ kindness-driven businesses.
Do You Believe in Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness?
What are YOU willing to do to help us Live into these aspirations in 2026?
A couple of months ago, we celebrated an important milestone, the 250th anniversary of the USA. I was thinking to myself, what might happen, 250 years after our founding as a nation, if we chose to show up as
Caring Citizens, not crass consumers
FellowAmericans not democrats or republicans
And intentionally Kind Humans not divisive, polarized, pissed-off people?
Locally, what would it mean to model Americaโs Kindest and most Purposeful Region instead of Americaโs Finest City?
Life without kindness is a cold, fragile, and lonely human experience stripped of safety, deep meaning, and genuine community connection.
Liberty without kindness is fraught with selfishness, isolation, cruelty in disguise, reducing freedom to a lack of care for others.
The pursuit of happiness without kindness is hollow, leading to isolation, selfishness, and an empty focus on shallow pleasures. True fulfillment requires care for others.
Unlike the status quo, this is not standing against anything, rather it is standing for something! This is about independence and interdependenceโฆ
Did you know there is a Kindness Certified company network, that was birthed right here in a back yard in San Diego that is advancing this work for organizations as well as youth all over the world through Kids for Peace, that has now grown to more than 45,000 schools in 123 countries, with so many here in San Diego?
“My religion is very simple. My religion is kindness”- Dalai Lama
I am proud to be part of this network, wear my โKindness Mattersโ bracelet nearly every day, and would love you to join us and help get the word out!
You can learn more about this movement here:
And learn more by listening to this podcast on your favorite platform:
Here is where you come in. My goal with your help is to add 250 new members/orgs right here in San Diego County in 2026, as living testimony and taking personal action, in the spirit of our founding fathersโ aspirations around independence and where our founding mothers would have undoubtedly included interdependence, modeling kindness, compassion, empathy and love.
Here is a positive way for each of us to show up in the best and highest way for America and San Diego to meet this moment.
The great news is the investment is nominal, we want your energy not your money, and just for us there is a 10% discount code to make this easy. The code is KINDNESSMATTERS250
Are you in? We will set up a Kindness Meter and track our progress over the next three months. Progress not perfection.
To the future of HumanKINDโฆ
Love,
Neville
“Be kind whenever possible. It is always possible.”
Social fitness is the biggest predictor of a happy life. Hereโs how to improve yours:
Enjoying the weather? Did you see the game? Small-talk and simple face-to-face interactions have a bigger effect on our wellbeing than you might think. So, do you fancy a cuppa? Dr Gillian Sandstrom was at the opera when she realized how good she had become at talking to strangers. A woman with Parkinsonโs was feeling anxious and needed an aisle seat and when Sandstrom noticed what was happening, she asked a whole row of people to move along to make room for the woman and her husbandโฆ
Disconnection is a national epidemic. The Chamber of Connection is a local antidote designed to interrupt transmission, treat those affected and prevent future spread!
Along with local friends and colleagues, I’d like to invite you to The Balboa Park Table on Monday, October 5 in Balboa Park at the Botanical Gardens from 6:30 to 9pm.
It’s a shared meal for 500 community leaders, builders, and weavers from every sector and community across San Diego County, hosted by Longer Tables San Diego and presented by OneSD. It isn’t a conference or a networking event. People sit at long tables and actually connect, without regard for our titles, job functions, or roles. This is a time for human being not human doing!
I was asked to help bring people I trust to expand the circle of community, and obviously you came to mind.
Access code: NEVILLEBILLIMORIA Two quick steps: 1. Click RSVP. 2. Your code should attach automatically. If you don’t see a ticket option for Community Leader, type the access code above to unlock it.
In the spirit of inclusion, Longer Tables SD is intentionally working to reach more San Diegans in East County, North Inland, our Hispanic/Latino and Asian communities, Indigenous/Tribal communities, people with disabilities, young adults and elders, cross-border/binational communities, and neighborhood, resident and frontline voices. If you are or know leaders in these areas or affinity groups and want to help invite them, you can register as a Community Partner at no cost and be recognized and represented in the event materials.
When you RSVP, please take the extra minute for the questionnaire at the end. It’s how they ensure we build a table that reflects the whole region, not just pockets of interest.
โWhen the human race learns to read the language of symbolism, a great veil will fall from the eyes of men.
They shall then know truth and, more than that, they shall realize that from the beginning truth has been in the world unrecognized,
save by a small but gradually increasing number appointed by the Lords of the Dawn as ministers to the needs of human creatures struggling to regain their consciousness of divinity.โ
– Manly Hall
This week:
On vacation in Hawaii this week, I saw a sign.
What struck me as ironic is that we have had legislation since 1973 to protect turtles in the whole country, but today in 2026 we treat fellow human beings with harassment, harm, pursuit, shootings, woundings, killings and trapping them!
Is it just me or do you see a dichotomy here with how we treat โendangered speciesโ and manโs inhumanity to man?
We call them animals but, in many cases, these purported animals are more compassionate and altruistic than we are.
Here are a few stories to reinforce our appreciation for these benevolent animals presenting an earnest opportunity for self-reflection for ourselves as a species.
These dogs were put into an MRI to discover what they know about human emotions โ the results were astonishing:
Good news for dog lovers, they might understand your happiness more than you’d think. Whether itโs an enthusiastic tail wag or a gentle nudge of the leg with their nose, it can sometimes feel like manโs best friend is truly in tune with our emotions. But surely dogs canโt understand what weโre feeling, right? Well, science might say otherwise. A study, recently published in the journal iScience, found that not only could dogs understand our emotions, but that they can separate them into categories surprisingly well!
They should be enemiesโฆ but what these 2 animals do for each other has amazed experts and left them speechless:
Research reveals cross-species co-operation between warthogs and mongooses. Many mammals indulge in mutual grooming to remove ticks and other parasites from their fur and skin but, aside from the occasional intriguing anecdote, it is unheard of for one mammal species to groom another. But Andy Plumptre of the Wildlife Conservation Society reports that just such cross-species co-operation regularly occurs between warthogs and banded mongooses in Ugandaโs Queen Elizabeth National Park.
People started building artificial beaver dams in California. Now something “mind blowing” is happening:
Following the construction of the dams, one river saw juvenile coho salmon survival rates soar from 8% to 60%. Itโs well known that beaver dams transform landscapes. In their absence, artificial versions were built in northern California to recreate lost wetlands โ boosting the survival of threatened coho salmon. The findings are published in Frontiers in Ecology and Evolution. Fish biologist Michael Pollock of NOAAโs Northwest Fisheries Science Center called the results โmind blowingโ!
Half the World are Women. The Other Half are Their Children:
Today, given the insane levels of uncertainty and inhumanity, many nonprofits, and the communities they serve are under siege and, leadership is more important than ever.
For decades, women in the nonprofit workforce have outpaced men, and the data validates that the larger the nonprofit, the more likely it is to be led by men.
In 2026, the uncontrolled gender pay gap in the United States stands at 82 cents for every dollar earned by men, widening slightly from 83 cents in prior cycles according to data from Payscale’s Gender Pay Gap Report.
If leadership is going to be more reflective and representative of those we serve, we need more women leaders in general- and particularly women of color- to align with the workforce and census numbers in our community.
Megaphone Hand, business concept with text Attention Please, vector illustration
Man UP!
Yes, I self-identify as a man, and I proudly believe in advocacy, allyship, and uplifting others regardless of gender or other factors.
What will it take so more of us can listen and amplify, challenge bias, mentor, and sponsor all in allyship?
It is time to โMan Upโ!
Join us Aug 31st at noon for a free webinar, Women in Leadership: Leading with Confidence, Authenticity and Purpose.
Enjoy Leading Through Change: Building the Next Generation of Nonprofit Leadership with Dr. Laura Deitrick.
If you donโt know here, Dr. Laura Deitrick is the Executive Director of The Nonprofit Institute and a Professor of Practice in Leadership Studies at the University of San Diego. She has served as a nonprofit executive director, board member, management consultant, program evaluator, and governance strategist. Over the past 15 years, Dr. Deitrick has produced key research on major nonprofit trends, including the strength of the nonprofit workforce, the economic impact of nonprofits and philanthropy, grantmaking, nonprofit finance, strategy, and board oversight and governance. She founded the award-winning San Diego Nonprofit Academy, a two-day training program that she continues to shape to meet the evolving needs of the nonprofit community. She leads a national executive management certificate for Catholic Charities USA and the MS in Nonprofit Leadership and Management for the School of Leadership and Education Sciences.
Dr. Deitrick holds a PhD in Leadership Studies and an MA in Nonprofit Leadership and Management, both from the University of San Diego, as well as a BA in Economics from San Diego State University. She serves on the board of the Barrio Logan College Institute and is the co-author of Cases in Nonprofit Management: A Hands-on Approach to Problem Solving, published by Sage.
That question doesn’t keep office hours. It shows up on the drive home. In the quiet after a hard board meeting. At the end of a day when you poured everything into the mission and still wonder if you got it right.
If you lead a nonprofit, you know the rest of them:
How do I get to the next level? How do I build a network beyond my own organization? Where do I find the people, the ideas, the resources that would make me better at this? How do I move my vision โ and my career โ forward inside all of it?
Most leaders try to answer those alone. You don’t have to.
NCPC’s ๐๐บ๐ฝ๐ฎ๐ฐ๐ ๐๐ฒ๐ฎ๐ฑ๐ฒ๐ฟ๐๐ต๐ถ๐ฝ ๐๐ฐ๐ฐ๐ฒ๐น๐ฒ๐ฟ๐ฎ๐๐ผ๐ฟ (๐๐๐) exists so San Diego’s nonprofit leaders can stop figuring it out in isolation. Learn alongside peers who get it. Build real relationships. Broaden your perspective and sharpen the skills that make you more effective โ for your team, your mission, and yourself.
The next cohort starts in September.
Know someone carrying these questions alone? Send this their way.
