Some seniors are especially vulnerable to financial abuse from people close to them, but the Elder Financial Protection Network is working to reduce those risks.

There's a 24-hour, toll-free hotline for reporting suspected elder abuse at 1-888-436-3600. Additional resources are available through every California county.

  EFPN is holding a online wine auction to help support the local non-profit. Bidding is active from Oct. 31 through Nov. 9.

An online  guide to resources available to residents anywhere in the United States is the Elder Care Locator. If you're not sure exactly what elder financial abuse is, there are answers here.

From the Sacramento River delta to the wilds of California's national parks, Michael Muir is helping urban wheelchair users maintain contact with the great outdoors.

Michael Muir is the Director of Access Adventure,  whose mission is "to provide outdoor recreation, environmental education and open space access to underserved youth and people with disabilities, using innovative wheelchair accessible horse-drawn carriages."

Access Adventure will be joining other organizations at the Sonoma County Fairgrounds on October 24^th for the Disability Services and Legal Center Tech Expo. For more info about this event, click here.

There are many equestrian programs for people with disabilities, but Muir says Access Adventure is different, and can complement hippotherapy activites.

 For a visiting group of educators from Ukraine, seeing American school classrooms in action was a learning experience.

  To read about the mission and design for the Open World Leadership Center, click here .

The Open World exchange program was established to increase partnership and sharing of economic and democratic practices between the two nations.  Sonoma County is one participant in the education program of having Ukraine educators visit for two weeks.

 To find out more about the US-Ukraine non profit organization, click here .

A unique affordable housing project in Sebastopol is combining a new co-housing community with the self-help or "sweat equity" approach to building it.

Tom Kuhn, the Sequoia Village project manager for Burbank Housing, explains the co-housing aspect of the development.

As future Sequoia Village homeowner Lee Logan sees it, this co-housing process has been different than most.

Sequoia Village in Sebastopol, a new family co-housing development offered through Burbank Housing Development Corp, was facilitatied by the late Michael Black (left)   who was the architect for the Two Acre Wood co-housing project in Sebastopol (pictured below). 

To learn more about co-housing, visit  Planning for Sustainable Communities here.