Windermere Real Estate is exceptionally proud of its agents and the many community service projects and services across the Valley that they support throughout the year. A large proportion of their efforts revolve around providing assistance to the homeless with a focus upon the children, a segment of the homeless population growing at a disproportionate rate. 

Windermere agents Diane Marx and Jenell Fontes, of Windermere’s flagship office located at 71691 Highway 111, Rancho Mirage, contribute time and effort to Olive Crest, an organization offering safe homes and support for these children.  Its stated mission: “Olive Crest is dedicated to preventing child abuse, to treating and educating at-risk children, and to preserving the family…one life at a time.” The organization does this by providing safe homes and support for children having few other options.  Jenell has worked with Olive Crest for four years, currently serving on the 12-member Board of Trustees.  Diane Marx, co-chair, refers to her earlier career as a teacher. “There are 10,000 child abuse cases per year in the Coachella Valley alone. These children truly are our future, and we need to protect them. Olive Crest gives them a voice.” 

Olive Crest has built four houses in the Coachella Valley, with each house providing individual bedrooms and safe residential surroundings for six children. Each safe house is adopted by a live-in family providing parent figures for the children, with an environment more like loving foster care rather than institutional facility. The overall goal of the safe home program is to reunite families.  Diane notes, “Families with temporarily insurmountable problems can voluntarily place their children with Olive Crest, and later become reunited. With Child Protective Services, for example, that’s not so easily done.”  Since 1995, Olive Crest has provided these services to the Coachella Valley desert communities. “Prior to Olive Crest constructing these homes, displaced children were relocated to Riverside County facilities,” says Jenell. “The children are so much better off being able to stay here in the Coachella Valley; for these families, this is home.”  

Windermere encourages readers to visit OliveCrest.org to learn more.