Woke up to the smoke today feeling the urgency to build community resilience like we did? Want to learn how to support your community in these times of wildfires? COVID-19? Blackouts? Droughts? Join us TODAY, September 9th, 2PM PST at our Community Driven Resilience Hubs Webinar.
The NorCal Resilience Network and Local Clean Energy Alliance will be collaborating to present information on Resilience Hubs, one of the most promising and equitable approaches to scaling up local resilience. These hubs give an opportunity to work effectively at the nexus of community resilience, emergency management, climate change mitigation, and social equity.
To learn more about this incredible event and its speaker line-up, head over to our event page or register here. This event is free and everyone is welcome. However, please consider making a donation to support the work of Local Clean Energy Alliance and the NorCal Resilience Network.
NorCal Resilience Network is launching a crowdfunder campaign in the coming few days. Stay tuned to donate to our campaign, which will provide direct support to BIPOC-led, on-the-ground resilience projects. Read below to learn about a previous project that we have supported, and will continue to support through the crowd funding campaign.
The Oakland Peace Center made tremendous progress on their Black-led garden initiative and living food pantry this summer. After receiving funding through a Resilience Hub mini-grant from the NorCal Resilience Network, and with additional volunteer support, the Peace Center has created a much-needed healing space for their community to connect to the land.
Ground cherries in the garden make some pretty cute figurines!
In addition to being a resilience hub in the NorCal Resilience Network, the Oakland Peace Center (find them on Twitter and Facebook here) is a community center that houses forty Bay Area organizations– primarily led by people of color– and works to foster disaster preparedness and racial justice in their community. One of their core values is to build “strong connections among [communities] so that everyone is welcome, receiving care and compassion from those around them,” in the words of Malaika Parker, their Development Consultant.
According to Parker, the garden is a community hub that exemplifies community nourishment, connectedness, and resilience, and was designed as a space to offer healing for community members most impacted by oppression. This includes providing spaces and resources to low-income folks in their immediate neighborhood, emphasizing support towards people of color.
What we are building is centered in a long view of what is possible when we care for one another
Malaika Parker, OPC Development Consultant
With the uncertainty and troubles of the COVID-19 pandemic, the Oakland Peace Center rose to the occasion to support their community. Tripling their volunteer engagement, the garden became a site of weekly volunteer-led grocery delivery for community members in need. This, paired with the support of the NorCal Resilience Network mini-grant, allowed the garden to get more food out to more people. The grant also provided the resilience hub with additional materials for the garden, including soil, planting materials, and safety measures for volunteers.
Looking towards the future, Parker notes that they are planning on extending the garden to have more edible plants, building an ADA garden, and adding a butterfly garden. They are also planning to add a food pantry for canned goods. “What we are building is centered in a long view of what is possible when we care for one another,” she adds insightfully. Through the support of volunteer members, donations, and the hard work of the Oakland Peace Center team, these plans can all be realized.
As mentioned above, the NorCal Resilience Network is launching a crowdfunder campaign to support Resilience Hubs including the Oakland Peace Center. It is imperative to invest in grassroots projects, resilience hubs, and people-powered regenerative solutions, led by and for BIPOC communities, to combat the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic, environmental injustices, systemic racism, and other inequities in our community. Please stay tuned to find out how you can donate!
NorCal Resilience Network is launching a crowdfunder campaign in the coming few days. Stay tuned to donate to our campaign, which will provide direct support to BIPOC-led, on-the-ground resilience projects. Read below to learn about a previous project that we have supported, and will continue to support through the crowd funding campaign.
What do artichokes, plantains, mullein, borage, and olive leaves have in common? They are a few of the plants grown by PLACE for Sustainable Living to create tinctures (concentrated herbal extracts) as a part of their new community apothecary. These plants, along with some others, will provide liver, lung, adrenal, and immunity health benefits to members of the North Oakland Community, where the medicine is distributed.
Tinctures are put into bottles for distribution.
PLACE launched their Community Apothecary Program with grant money from the NorCal Resilience Network this summer at their North Oakland Resilience Hub. Through this program, they will be able to share medicine and tinctures (grown on site at the PLACE garden) with their community, focusing especially on getting this valuable resource to their unhoused neighbors.
At People Linking Art, Community, and Ecology, otherwise known as PLACE, community members serve the public as an experiential learning center working at the intersection of sustainable living practices, urban homesteading, community resiliency, racial justice, and food and farming.
The funding from the mini-grant also went towards purchasing the materials necessary for bottling their medicines. According to Khadija Khansia, the PLACE Community and Garden Steward, they intend to continue the medicine making project as they secure more funds for the alcohol and bottles for tincturing. In the future, they aim to become a stronger emergency hub in their neighborhood, securing items including a backup generator, emergency crank radio, and a food supply for their neighborhood.
Additionally, as a Resilience Hub engaged with the NorCal Resilience Network, PLACE has collaborated with many other hubs to strengthen community resilience in Oakland. At the beginning of the COVID crisis, PLACE leveraged the network to partner with Essential Food and Medicine (EFAM), who distributed their medicine for free to encampments. They sourced their medicinal plants from Spiral Gardens, another Resilience Hub. This type of collaboration between hubs is growing and is crucial to creating resilience resources in localized community spaces. Through future grants, NorCal Resilience Network hopes to strengthen these collaborations.
Another collaborative project PLACE is working on is monthly food distributions with their partnered organization since 2014, North Oakland Restorative Justice Council. Every three weeks, both organizations–with the help of EFAM–source donations and make deliveries to houseless neighbors, with a capacity of 500 meals and hygiene kits. These have recently expanded to include DIY masks. These organizations have an overall umbrella organization: Oakland Communities United for Justice and Equity. Other groups include Self-Help Hunger Program (Aunti Francis’ Black Panther legacy), Phat Beets Produce and NORJC.
All of this collaboration comes on the cusp of NorCal Resilience Network’s upcoming launch of our crowdfunder campaign to support Resilience Hubs like PLACE. It is imperative to invest in grassroots projects, resilience hubs, and people-powered regenerative solutions, led by and for BIPOC communities, to combat the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic, environmental injustices, systemic racism, and other inequities in our community. Please stay tuned to find out how you can donate!
If you are interested in getting involved with PLACE, they regularly post on Facebook and Instagram, and have social distanced events for previous volunteers. To keep up public engagement with their work, they have also launched digital events and workshops via Crowdcast that continue to educate on permaculture and sustainability.
NorCal Resilience Network is launching a crowdfunder campaign in the coming few days. Stay tuned to donate to our campaign, which will provide direct support to BIPOC-led, on-the-ground projects. This article illustrates an inspiring example of the kinds of projects that we have supported, and will continue to support through the crowd funding campaign.
Volunteers Create a Community Garden and Clinic for Youth with the Dream Youth Clinic
On July 27th, about 15 volunteers, wearing masks and socially distanced from each other, sweated away on a cul de sac in Downtown Oakland to clear out old garden beds to make way for fresh soil and new life. They spent the afternoon clearing debris, pulling weeds and disposing of trash, and emptying the garden beds filled with unwanted gravel and dirt to make way for a future community garden and outdoor clinic. Behind them, a vibrant mural with hopeful visions of community members and hearts had been painted, a beautiful sight to look at.
A beautiful display of the power of the NorCal Resilience Network, this was one of the Dream Youth Clinic’s work parties for their future community garden and outdoor clinic. The volunteers heralded from various organizations around the Bay Area – including Tract Trust, Green Life and PLACE for Sustainable Living–all Network members–and were working to prepare the land for the garden, which would soon be as beautiful as the mural behind it. They enjoyed smoothies from Network collaborator Essential Food and Medicine and made valuable work connections and new friendships. NorCal Resilience supported the project with two mini-grants.
Community volunteers work hard on preparing the garden beds at the Dream Youth Center work party.
Dream Youth Clinic, a youth site of Roots Community Health Center, is a youth-led, youth-empowered health clinic, co-located within the Dreamcatcher and Covenant House Youth Shelters; and one of NorCal Resilience Network’s collaborating Resilience Hubs. They offer free medical care to vulnerable youth in Oakland and the Greater Bay Area. Many of its clients often have had experiences with family violence, food insecurity, and/or sexual abuse or exploitation. Creating a peaceful space in the community is exactly what the Dream Youth Clinic has been accomplishing.
The goal of the garden/outdoor clinic is youth-led and will integrate the youth in the design and execution of the garden, making it a space created for them and by youth.
According to director Dr. Aisha Mays, it has been a dream of hers to create a garden, noting that in the past, their desolate surroundings promoted inadequate nutrition, isolation, and poor health outcomes in clients– she knew a garden that would also serve as their outdoor clinic would help to combat these issues and improve health. In April 2019, the Clinic had its first visioning focus group where youth were asked how they would like the garden to be created. They were asked, “If we were to build a garden here, what do you see in this garden? How does it make your body feel?” One individual remarked:
“Being in touch with my emotions and thoughts without someone else telling me to do it. Peaceful & community-like. Makes me feel safe. There’s not a lot of other spaces that make me safe or free to say and do things I need to do to feel like myself. Inner peace. Patience with myself. Letting go of all the emotions that I had built.”
Receiving seed funding from two NorCal Resilience Network mini-grants, the Chase Center, Planting Justice, and other foundations, the Dream Youth Clinic is starting to put its project of building a community garden and outdoor clinic into motion. To create a safe space to reconnect with nature, as desired by the focus group, the Dream Youth Clinic incorporated help from experts at Planting Justice to plan the Urban Garden Clinic. This clinic is planned to be a wellness place immersed in the garden with the intent of providing a unique juxtaposition of the clinic with fresh, nutritious food and a peaceful, aesthetic green space that can improve overall health outcomes for adolescents. Workshops at the garden will be conducted by local community members and will inform youth volunteers on topics including seedling development, plant medicine, medicinal gardens, soil health, and food as medicine.
Part of the grant money will be used to design and construct a water catchment gazebo to collect and store up to 250 gallons of rainwater. Prioritizing Black builders, the clinic will be hiring community members to construct the gazebo from sustainable and repurposed materials.
The Dream Youth Clinic received a second grant from NorCal Resilience recently. This money will be used to pay stipends to the youth for working in the garden and community members for providing education and eco-friendly smoothies, and purchase vegetable starts and fruit trees to start growing produce. The Dream Youth Clinic finally broke ground on this project in July with the garden work day; after months of planning, Dr. Mays’ dream of a community garden and in Downtown Oakland is materializing.
“We so appreciate the support of NorCal Resilience Network and love being one of the Resilience Hubs. We hope that the Network will join us in the fall once again after the garden has been planted, to celebrate our “grand opening,” commented Project Director Deb Levine.
As mentioned above, the NorCal Resilience Network is launching a crowdfunder campaign to support Resilience Hubs including the Dream Youth Clinic. It is imperative to invest in grassroots projects, resilience hubs, and people-powered regenerative solutions, led by and for BIPOC communities, to combat the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic, environmental injustices, systemic racism, and other inequities in communities. Please stay tuned to find out how you can donate!
