BFJ

Stories of Community Support

City Slicker Farms

City Slicker Farms — A great name and a great idea! This small, non-profit organization helps residents of West Oakland create high-yield urban farms and backyard gardens. Each family’s backyard vegetable garden is built using 3’x 8’ planter boxes, two trellises and a fruit tree. City Slicker Farms also operates six Community Market Farms in nearby neighborhood lots, the produce from which go out to the community through their donation-only Saturday Farm Stand.

The project’s mission is to empower West Oakland community members to meet immediate and basic needs for healthy organic food. City Slicker Farms shares information and techniques, then essential tools, resources and support to low-income residents so they can become successful urban gardeners. Bread for the Journey of Oakland is honored to grant City Slicker Farms $400 for their efforts to promote healthy eating, nutritional awareness, and empowerment to the community of West Oakland.

Born Brown: All Rights Reserved (BB: ARR) is a social enterprise agency that promotes understanding and collaboration among people of color with various origins. Their work aspires to liberate activists, educators, youth and elders by countering oppressive messages from the media with ones that evoke self-acceptance and self-love.

Shalonda Ingram, co-founder and managing director of Born Brown, designed and presented a workshop entitled “Transforming Hip-Hop: Challenging Male Supremacy and Gender Oppression in Hip-Hop Music and Culture” at the US Social Forum held in Atlanta, GA, in June 2007. While hip-hop historically provided a source of healing from the trauma of oppression. much of today’s commercial hip-hop contain themes that perpetuate gender discrimination, homophobia and sexual violence.

This unique workshop created a space in which to challenge the oppressive dynamics of male supremacy in hip-hop, and to explore the complexity and apparent contradiction of using hip-hop as part of our systems change and social justice work. Bread for the Journey of Oakland was honored to provide Born Brown a grant of $1,000 to promote this transformational workshop to the Oakland and surrounding area communities.

Boundless Hearts

Last year, 148 people were murdered in the city of Oakland, California. Mothers are mourning the loss of their children, younger and older, to violence. The vivid memory of this loss is more profound on the child's birthday, the anniversary of their death, and on Mother's Day.

A community gathering called Mother’s Morning/Mourning held on the day before Mother’s Day, will honor and spiritually support mothers who have lost their children to violence in Oakland. A gathering of love, compassion, spirit and creativity, this is the first event held by Boundless Hearts, an organization of companions and chaplains providing spiritual care to communities and individuals in the San Francisco East Bay.

Founded by Pamela Ayo Yetunde, Boundless Hearts plans to train mothers whose children have died to become spiritual guides for others who have also suffered such losses. This gathering has wide community support, including the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights, Silence the Violence Project, InterPlay, Holy Names University, Sophia Center at Holy Names University, Talisman, Traveling with the Turtle Women's Spirituality and Peacemaking Program, and local Councilmember Jean Quan.

Bread for the Journey of Oakland was honored to grant $500 toward the production of Boundless Hearts’ first community event, Mother’s Morning/Mourning.

On the Bricks

Recently launching its pilot project this summer, On the Bricks is a six-week grassroots mentoring and support re-entry internship program for youth returning to Oakland from the county juvenile hall or the California Juvenile Justice Division. This new endeavor — associated with One Fam, a community support coalition — targets youth and young adults recently released from prison or juvenile hall who demonstrate a desire to be part of a caring community. On the Bricks (a term for returning to the streets from prison) focuses on matching up participants with mentors who bring the individual into a community where they gain assistance and purpose as well as an experience of helping others. The mentorship program includes job preparedness, education in citizens’ rights, community service, as well as visits to places that inner-city youth may never have experienced before (such as hiking in a nearby redwood park). The participants interact with people who are truly making positive impacts in the community. The participants learn that they really matter to others! Bread for the Journey of Oakland supported Tony Coleman with a gift of $1,000 for this worthwhile project.

Jamestown Community Center, Treehouse Project, San Francisco Mission District

Alex was a 13 year-old boy who had grown up participating in many of the Jamestown Community Center’s programs. Alex was now beginning to stay out late, experiment with drugs, and was in danger of joining a local gang. For the sake of Alex and other Jamestown youth in similar situations, Saul Hidalgo and two staff members searched for services that might help them. When they found none, they initiated Treehouse – a weekly all-volunteer get-together where adolescent boys could receive mentoring and guidance from adult males who they know and trust. The program was an instant hit. The boys not only began sharing their struggles within the safety of a circle of peers; they also sought out support from the group’s leaders.

Bread for the Journey of Oakland gave the Jamestown Community Center a grant of $500 to help fund the newly expanded Treehouse program, now serving elementary-school-aged boys and adolescent girls. Since these groups currently operate with very little funding, the Bread for the Journey grant will help pay for meals that the youth prepare and share with each other when they meet every Friday afternoon. Today, the original group of boys remain at the heart of Treehouse. Alex, now 16 years old and a B student, continues to attend his peer support group, as do all of his fellow founding members.

Barbara Gordon, John Moore & Victoria Mausisa

Victoria Mausisa
P.O. Box 11432
Oakland, CA 94611
vic822@yahoo.com