There\u2019s nothing more important to Pacific Beach resident Caryn Blanton than investing in her community. With 15 years of community service under her belt, Blanton has worked with nonprofits like San Diego Workforce Partnership, focused on job training programs, and started her own nonprofit called the Pacific Beach Street Guardians, hiring homeless neighbors to help with street cleaning as well as church and school custodial work. Now, Blanton aims to serve her neighbors as well with her new business, Simply Service. “Community service is what I\u2019m best at,” said Blanton. “It\u2019s everything to me.”
\nAfter three years of working with roughly 60 homeless community members, Blanton had to close the Pacific Beach Street Guardians business last March, being a one-woman show for so long and not making enough funds to stay afloat. Blanton says Simply Service bloomed out of her desperate desire to do whatever she could to stay in touch with the community. “Pretty much whatever anybody doesn\u2019t want to do, I will step in,” said Blanton of Simply Service, which she launched this past December. “Honestly, it\u2019s been amazing. I started out mostly decorating Christmas trees and present wrapping, but now I help with people\u2019s bookkeeping, social media management, and I have two surfboards in my garage right now that I need to take in for repairs. Every day is something totally different.”
\nIt\u2019s only been six weeks that Blanton has been running Simply Service full time, but she\u2019s currently working for eight clients at a time each week. Whether it\u2019s dog sitting, organizing moving boxes, event planning or notarizing official documents, Simply Service has very few tasks, and location, limitations. While most of Blanton\u2019s clients so far have been in the PB and Point Loma areas, she\u2019s also begun taking on tasks for clients as far as Los Angeles \u2014 for a travel fee, of course.
\n“It\u2019s random and crazy and I\u2019m having a great time doing it,” said Blanton. She added: “Part of the reason I thought this business would work is because of the reputation and trust I built with the community working with the PB Street Guardians. I work with people\u2019s tax info and have keys to their apartments. That\u2019s not something you just hand over to someone who rolled into town. I\u2019m an actual neighbor to a lot of these people and that\u2019s why I thought Simply Service would be a good vehicle for my mission.”
\nBlanton\u2019s “mission” is to use Simply Service as a way to still give back to the community that still owns her heart: the homeless.
\n“My passion is to help my neighbors, but especially those who are experiencing homelessness, so I\u2019m taking a percentage of my fees and putting it back into places that are working to help those groups at a systemic level,” said Blanton, who hopes the business will serve as a bridge between “people who have something and people who don\u2019t.”
\n“Every time one of my clients gets their invoice, I do a breakdown so they can see how much money will go toward helping those who need it,” Blanton added. “I think that\u2019s also a little eye-opening for people.”
\nSimply service charges an introductory sum of $20 per hour for services and an additional fee for traveling distances further than 15 miles. To contact Blanton to utilize Simply Service, visit simplyservicesd.com.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
There\u2019s nothing more important to Pacific Beach resident Caryn Blanton than investing in her community. With 15 years of community service under her belt, Blanton has worked with nonprofits like San Diego Workforce Partnership, focused on job training programs, and started her own nonprofit called the Pacific Beach Street Guardians, hiring homeless neighbors to help […]<\/p>","protected":false},"author":726,"featured_media":269676,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"11559","_seopress_titles_title":"Simply Service works to make life easier for Pacific Beach residents","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"jnews_override_counter":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[11559,11551],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-269675","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-beach-bay-press","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/269675","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/726"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=269675"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/269675\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/269676"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=269675"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=269675"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=269675"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}