YesSF partners with retired all-star Hunter Pence's non-profit for SF cleanup
SAN FRANCISCO - The Yes SF coalition got an all-star boost on Friday, as retired San Francisco Giants player Hunter Pence partnered with Deloitte and other Yes SF members for a "Pick up with Pence" trash cleanup event in downtown San Francisco.
Pence launched his non-profit called Healthy Planet Project about one year ago, dedicated to helping make San Francisco more sustainable and improve the environment in the city through cleanup efforts, tree-planting, and youth educational initiatives.
"Yes SF is completely aligned with the same things that the Healthy Planet Project is aimed at doing, which is creating a sustainable San Francisco," Pence said.
Yes SF is a public-private partnership that was formed with a mission to revitalize San Francisco by bringing startups and innovators with ideas for sustainable, urban solutions to the city.
"This is our one-year anniversary of launching Yes SF with the SF Chamber of Commerce, the World Economic Forum, Salesforce, and Citi, and it's really exciting to have a local innovation challenge that's bringing top innovators focused on sustainability and solutions in an urban setting here to the city," said Alison Hagan, San Francisco Managing Principal for Deloitte.
Deloitte is one of YesSF's founding partners and supplied many of the volunteers on Friday for the cleanup event, as part of the company's annual impact day.
"One of the things that is so special about Yes SF, is the collaboration between the private sector, the non-profits, the innovators and the city," Hagan said.
On Friday, Hagan said Yes SF is on course to open its new headquarters this coming fall on Montgomery Street near the intersection with Bush Street. The new office will provide a hub to help many of the Yes SF startup innovators that Hagan says are already scaling up.
"Potentially, developing new jobs and helping support how we live in an urban setting," Hagan said. "When we launched the challenge last year, we had 150 submissions and from that group chose 14 innovators. So today, the call to action was, hopefully, we can get 300 people submitting."
Hagan says Yes SF hopes to have another innovation challenge this coming fall, perhaps with the opening of the new headquarters downtown.
"Just amazing to see the impact that they've made in just a year. You're feeling the uprising. The city is getting more vibrant. There are more people walking around. It's cleaner. It's feeling safer. So it's very exciting times, and we still have a lot left to do in the movement," Pence said.
Jana Katsuyama is a reporter for KTVU. Email Jana at jana.katsuyama@fox.com. Call her at 510-326-5529. Or follow her on Twitter @JanaKTVU and read her other reports on her bio page.
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