It was a simple gathering. Pizza and salad were served to a host of people in an overcrowded room. There were no formal speeches or presentations, and people spent the majority of the luncheon chitchatting with fellow attendees.

Board member Steve Zimmer, 4th District, and his office hosted a luncheon on Tuesday for the organizations that support the Hollywood FamilySource Center. (photo by Aaron Blevins)

However, the event served as a thank you to people and organizations involved in providing “life and death” services to area families, Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) board member Steve Zimmer, 4th District, said.

His office hosted the luncheon at the Hollywood FamilySource Center, a one-stop shop for individuals seeking free health and education services. Operated by the Youth Policy Institute, the facility opened at the beginning of 2012.

“It’s actually very significant — people sitting and breaking bread together,” Zimmer said. “It doesn’t happen often. It’s the best way I can imagine spending the first day of school.”

The center offers a host of training opportunities for Los Angeles residents. Its services cover employment, tutoring, leadership, college support, case management, college savings, GEDs, English as a second language (ESL), financial literacy, parenting and more.

While the Youth Policy Institute runs the facility, the services come from an array of organizations. Many of those entities, such as the Los Angeles Youth Network and Covenant House, were represented during the luncheon.

“This what we dreamed about when we opened the first resource center in East Hollywood — really in the history of this neighborhood,” Zimmer said to those in attendance. “It’s working for families in our community.”

He said he wanted to bring the “whole school family” together for the first day of school on Tuesday. Zimmer said that as a family, the group is going to make health and education work together.

“We’re not doing this every day,” he said of the luncheon, joking, “but you’re in our hearts every day.”

Zimmer said the FamilySource Center is the result of people deciding to work together to address “profound” needs in the community. The more resources that a group has, the better it can serve families, he said.

The luncheon also celebrated the launch of the center’s first continuation school, an alternative school program exclusively for youth in homeless shelters.

“We have the largest homeless youth population here in Hollywood anywhere in the nation,” Zimmer said. “We have not, for the most part, specialized our delivery system to best serve youth who will only be in shelters for a short period of time.”

The board member also referenced the ESL and GED courses, which he called “game-changers” for parents. He said the center on Tuesday hosted more than 40 adults who were taking their first English class.

“It’s great,” Zimmer said. “It’s what this place was designed for. I’m very, very proud that the board office can be a part of [the effort]. …This is not how people usually think school board members spend their resources, but to me, this is the best investment I can make. People don’t really know what you can do when you have pools of both human resources and financial resources and put them together. There’s a lot more resources to go around.”

The center also drew praise from Mayor Eric Garcetti during his speech at Superintendent John Deasy’s annual address at Hollywood High School last week. He said the center was able to serve more than 9,000 children from the LAUSD school system last year.

“That’s not something the city would have done decades ago or just even a few years ago,” he said, “but we see that as our central role if we’re going to serve our young constituents — what can we do to make sure they don’t drop out?”

The Hollywood FamilySource Center is located at 1075 N. Western Ave., Suite 110. For information, call (323)836-0055 or visit www.ypiusa.org.