In this interview, I spoke with Robin Bean Crane, who talked about the numerous and wonderful projects happening in the urban farm in Oakland. After our interview, I headed over to one of Canticle Farm’s garden parties with my friend, Ishaana, and helped them plant some tomato seeds. I also took a few pictures, which are included in this article, but to truly experience the peaceful and communal atmosphere, you might want to go support Canticle Farms by attending one of their events.
Q: Can you tell me what Canticle Farm does?
Crane: We’re an intentional community experimenting at the intersection of faith-based, race-based, and earth-based activism. It’s a platform for figuring out how to live together across differences and how to serve our hyper-local community and neighbors. Our theoretical pillars are non-violent communication, restorative justice, and work that reconnects.
Q: Can you paint a picture of what you do at Canticle Farm?
Crane: Picture seven houses between two busy streets in Fruitvale (a neighborhood in Oakland), with all the fences knocked down between them. This creates an open, common, guiding space.
These seven houses each have their mission within the larger whole. There’s a house that focuses on neighborhood work, there’s a house that focuses on restorative justice work, there’s about to be an asylum seeker program, and there was a house dedicated toward gardening and restoration. Our mission is to learn together in a beautiful way.
We have many different land projects that also fulfill this mission, such as rainwater garden beds, demonstration projects for our neighbors (on how to grow edible and native plants), and we’re trying to remove invasive plants and replace them with natives. We have a childcare program, where we have our neighbor’s kids over and take care of them. We also have a program with high schoolers, and on Thursdays we do food distribution and give out free food and herbal medicine consultations. There’s an interfaith service on Sunday, and we’re about to open a community kitchen project. It’ll be exciting where the community can come. A living, learning laboratory.
Q: Can you talk about your resilience hub work some more?
Crane: We have a solar panel and battery project. Part of the work with a resilience hub is that, when sh*t goes down, people can come and find resources. We also have food distribution services, so we want to be a place where people in the neighborhood can come, even when there’s not a disaster.
People can also come and learn about the Earth. We have a water remediation project, where we’re putting in drought-resistant plants and water remediating plants, and then filtering the water through pumping it from this really old well. We then pump that water into a fish pond, and there the fish poop and add nutrients to the water. This then gets funneled to the plants that clean the water, and then it makes its way down the land, so the creek gets cleaner and cleaner. This ties in to the creek restoration project, where we invite anyone and everyone to come help us “daylight” this creek.
It’s really deep to me, because this water has been in cement tunnels and underground for centuries and generations, and now it will get daylighted and be around bees and birds; the ecosystem will be alive again. That’s exciting! We’re inviting people to come and restore the riverbanks.
Little demonstration projects like that are part of what it means to be a resilience hub, as well actually distributing resources.
Q: Going back to something you said earlier, you said you wanted to be ready for when sh@# goes down, whether it’s the solar batteries or growing your food. What kind of disasters do you see affecting your area?
There are already the disasters of racism and capitalism, alive and well. That ends up creating food insecurity crises. So we’re working with our neighbors to avoid the charity model of food distribution, we want to plant a seed for deeper collaboration.
How do we support each other past food? One thing that we talked a lot about is having crisis intervention training, and teaching each other self defense tactics that avoid calling the police and ways to intervene in escalated situations. That happens a lot in our neighborhood, and we’re trying to train each other around that form of crisis.
In terms of natural disasters, there are earthquakes, and in that case we have our kits. We distributed a bunch of earthquake prep kits during a block party. We want to do more stuff like that: integrating emergency prep into fun stuff. In terms of fires, we distributed masks, and bought a couple of air filters for everyone in our immediate community. Another thing is the drought. A lot of our gardening work, rain garden work, native plant work, creek restoration work, is centered around how we live in a drought affected place and with water scarcity.
Q: It sounds like Canticle Farms are reaching out to the people most vulnerable in the face of climate change.
Crane: The people who live at Canticle, and who are in those populations most affected by climate change, have talked about how living in community is a part of the healing process.
Also, a lot of our neighbors have recently immigrated, and still are getting their footing in this wild society of ours. We are a place for them to ask questions, like how do I navigate the school system? How do I fill out this paper work? We also serve the wider community. There’s internal and external service work, and we try to orient that around people who have been historically oppressed.
It sounds like Canticle is at the nexus of a lot of different communities and identities! Can you tell us what’s in Canticle’s future?
We want to expand our food preservation work with our community kitchen, and invite people to come work on fermentation, canning, and preserving projects. We also want to invite them to use the kitchen space. Also, we hope to be able to stipend teams in our neighborhoods for them to do this earth-based work, whether it’s roles for youth to do food cooking and delivery, or maybe composting. We don’t have plans yet, just daydreams around taking care of our neighborhoods. No one gets paid right now, but maybe in the future, if we could stipend people, that would be great.
This interview is part of an occasional series showcasing different inspirational community organizers who are part of the NorCal Resilience Network and organizing resilience hubs. Meet Bonnie Borucki and the Ashby Garden!
Ashby Garden, located in South Berkeley was founded in 2004. It started in an empty lot of the location and grew into a flourishing garden of many fruits, flowers, and vegetables. People here grow their own food and are independent of ongoing city programs. Volunteers also come by to help out with the garden and participate in community events. People also come together to share their knowledge of urban farming and grow food collectively.
NorCal Resilience intern Tracy Ngyuyen caught up with Bonnie to talk about this beautiful oasis and her role in it.
How did the garden begin? How has it grown and flourished?
We have a group of young people who are food activists and there were more vacant properties back then. They decided that this lot should be used for purposeful things for the community such as involving the community and growing food.
People who started the garden went to the books and asked who owned the land. We the flyered the neighborhood, had potlucks, community meetings, and eventually started classes and workshops. In the broader community, people have members and volunteers. We have garden members who pay for plots because it’s not financed. There are water bills, insurance. They grow whatever they like, grow and harvest, and share when they can. It’s a community space so it can be arranged for people to come and collect food. Or they can pick and distribute.
What does Ashby Garden hope to get out of the leadership training?
It’s difficult to stay with projects so trying to get people to commit is what we’re hoping. How do you commit and get other people to commit for a long time ya know? It’s also a lot of experimentation. Seeing other people can be incentives, and also going to a beautiful garden is another.
What are the short-term and long-term goals for the garden?Whom to you hope to impact?
Our long term goals are keeping the space, having it grow and thrive, and be part of the community. We’re hoping a land trust can help take it over.Our vision is to have a spot to build community by allowing people of many backgrounds to participate and contribute their best. Also we’re hoping for more community building overall.
The biggest impact would be to connect people with soil, plants, and support of other creatures. Water is also important and having an appreciation for these spots is also important.
What other kinds of projects are you working on in the community?
I am a co-director of Transition Berkeley, an organization that brings neighbors and community members together to build a more equitable, regenerative, self-reliant future for Berkeley. Projects we are working on include “Bee City Berkeley”, where we are planting pollinator gardens in Berkeley parks and public schools, and educating the public about the relationship between plants, pollinators, and our food. Another project is Essential Repair Skills Trainings, where we are bringing in repair experts in clothing, bike, appliance and electronics repair to teach these skills to high school and college students. A third project is Mobilize Berkeley. The group brings together UCB SERC students, environmental educators, faith-based communities, and other Berkeley residents to provide information on the state of climate change, ways to participate in a climate emergency mobilization, and preparation for the impact of climate change and other crises we are increasingly experiencing.”
Why is this work important so important to you?
“I’ve realized that the most important and satisfying work is to join with others in creating a society that lives in good relations to the earth and all the people and life forms that inhabit our planet. I recently heard a phrase that puts this work in perspective, “ When we have hope, we have life, and when we have life, we have hope”. To me this means that as long as we are living and thinking, we can make changes that will sustain a dignified, joyful life for future generations.”
Don’t let anybody tell you that they know how this is going to end: The Maxwell Park Frick Seminary
Climate change is a global problem, but Laura Nicodemus is stepping up to be a part of a local solution. In this interview, Nicodemus talks about starting resilience hubs in her own neighborhood, and how one person can make a difference.
Tell us about your resilience hub team.
Our team actually is just me and my husband. We’re going to be pulling in other people in. We live in Maxwell Park in Oakland. We’re really starting from scratch, I have a lot of neighborhood organizing skills and we’ve lived in our neighborhood for seventeen years. In terms of getting a resilience hub going, we’re at the beginning. It’s a little daunting, so part of the challenge is… getting used to dealing with the challenge.
So, why did you want to start a resilience hub?
Because it made sense to us to be a part of something that had more aspects to it than just disaster preparation. Personally, I think a lot of people lead really isolated lives. We need to be connecting more and depending on each other and helping each other out. This is a really good way of doing that. Also, it just makes sense to put different aspects of resilience altogether. In terms of disaster preparation, it’s a good excuse for us to get our acts together. Something that just occurred to me this morning was like, setting up a disaster prep buddy system. I’m sure people are already doing this, but it’d be a program where there’s someone you’re checking in to stay accountable. That seems like a good, tangible way to get started. For us, one of the challenges is that there isn’t a clear space we can have.
You talked about disaster preparation. What kind of disasters do you see affecting your neighborhood specifically?
Well, certainly an earthquake. But also just living through fires and the smoke. For people who can’t go out, I’m thinking that the fire season and this level of smoke threat is going to become unfortunately pretty regular. We need to be ready to help each other out. And there’s the pandemic. That’s another disaster. My fantasy would be if we could set up a general neighborhood helping system, so that if there’s an elderly person who needs help, then that could be a part of it. I live on the border of two neighborhoods, one is Maxwell Park, and it’s more affluent and more, as far as I’m aware, more organized. And then the other neighborhood has people who are struggling with a lot of day-to-day stuff. As I’m talking to you, I’m realizing that before I make any conclusions, I need to find out more about that other neighborhood. I want to avoid coming in as a white person with the solutions. I’m going to try to avoid that.
You’ve talked a lot about you and your husband taking the initiative to combat really global threats, like the pandemic or climate change. Do you think a lot of other people are waking up to create local solutions to global problems?
That’s a good question, I’ve been thinking a lot about that. I actually have a theory about that. It’s a dialectic, a yin-yang thing, and it’s pretty simple. Basically, there’s these huge problems like global warming and climate change and pandemics and they’re really overwhelming, right? People spend a lot of time thinking about ‘Can we save the world? Can we stop this? Oh my god, what if we can’t?’ I think we need a more constructive way to deal with problems. I see it as a dialectic where there are threats where people just need help. People need aid. So, if you want to build people’s sense of agency, then sure, try and do work to reduce the threat, but acknowledge it’s just as important to help the people, the animals, and the environments after they’ve been damaged. So, there’s always something you can do that makes a difference. Nobody is going to say to you: I didn’t appreciate your help because you weren’t working on the source problem. A good example are the fires in Sonoma. It’s a terrible problem, and most people just needed help. That’s just to say that if you think of the humanitarian support as part of the equation, then there’s always something you can be doing. The cool thing is that the organizing that is necessary is a lot of the same organizing that is necessary for preventing the problems.
Have you heard of a woman named Joanna Macy before?
No I haven’t.
You should check her out. She is somebody who has been working on helping people get strong enough to deal with this stuff for decades, since the, I think the, 70s. She’s about to stop teaching, but she’s generated this whole movement of people who are trained to help others to deal with their feelings and to hook in. I did a training with her at a place called Spirit Rock, which is a center up in Marin, which organizes a lot of politically active stuff. This amazing 6-hour training with her goes from this place of ‘What’s to celebrate about the Earth? What can you be grateful for?’ and then going deep into the ‘It’s really bad right now though,’ and then coming to this place where you can bring the two things together, a place of gratitude and love and acceptance where you can work to make things better. At the end, she says, ‘Don’t let anybody tell you that they know how this is all going to end.’ I was really inspired about that, and I thought, We don’t know how this is all going to play out, and we can’t buy into the notion that we’re going to hell in a hand basket. That’s just too simplistic. Even if things go downhill, there’s still all this helping each other, and organizing that’s really profound and that we can all be doing. I don’t mean to sound resigned, I think the resilience hub is a place where all these ideas can meet. Also, I like the idea of blending physical resilience with cultural resilience. I’m a singer and a musician, so it’s a cool place to see this blending. But all this being said, I still feel overwhelmed. I’ve got a full life, a teenager, and a host of my problems to deal with.
Regardless, it sounds like you’ve got a great framework to be building off of.
I would say so. It’s helpful to understand the other kind of challenges and responsibilities that regular folks have. If you want to pull them in, you need to know where they’re coming from.
The Canal Community Resilience Council (CCRC) is a part of the Multicultural Center of Marin’s Community resilience program, and is working to mitigate the local impacts of climate change in the Canal area of Marin County. Marco Berger, head of the Canal Community Resilience Council, notes that “The canal is particularly prone to sea level rise. It’s probably going to be one of the first to be affected in the area.” Located at a low elevation, issues of sea level rise are particularly pertinent to the neighborhood. Water levels in the San Francisco Bay can rise eight inches by 2035 and sixteen inches by 2050. Parts of the Canal could face up to two feet of flooding in the future.
The CCRC, comprised of members of the Canal neighborhood, convenes every month to discuss issues that could affect their community. And there are a lot of issues, including (but not limited to): housing, sea level rise, water quality, water access, flooding, waste management, transportation, and emergency preparedness. At CCRC meetings, stakeholders and community partners from local government agencies join to clarify policies and listen to citizen input.
Berger is keenly aware of this, observing that “People sit at home and they go, ‘Wow climate change. Stuff is going to go down. Things are gonna happen. But it’s over there somewhere, and I gotta put food on the table, I gotta pay rent.” However, he adds that communities are beginning to become more attuned to these issues. “I think as there are more things coming out about extreme weather and snowstorms in Texas, and people are starting to wake up.”
This work is a part of a larger impetus to provide local solutions to what is ultimately a global crisis: climate change.
That’s why it’s more important than ever to build community networks, so people know where to go for resources. That’s why Berger signed up to join the Resilience Hubs Leadership Training Program, “We’re really in an exploratory stage, we’re looking to see how we get involved and become a hub. It’d be good for people to know there’s a place for them to go for resources in a place of disaster.
Despite the added obstacles of the COVID-19 pandemic, Berger is persistent. “As long as I can keep doing work, that’s what I’m going to be doing.”
In this interview, NorCal Resilience Network intern Emily Zou spoke with Astrid Scott, the program manager at the Fremont Wellness Center, which is an arm of the Bay Area Community Services. Scott’s passion for serving the community is clear, and she is insistent on continuing the work for those who need it most. According to their last quarter report, the Fremont Homeless Wellness Center provided carry out meal services to approximately 30-50 individuals on a daily basis. The Wellness Center also provides every participant with masks, gloves, face shields and hand sanitizer. The Fremont Wellness Center is also looking ahead, and preparing the Fremont community for imminent wildfires. Last summer, five of the largest wildfires in California history raged across the West Coast. The smoke from the fires would create apocalyptic landscapes, and also send the AQI (Air Quality Index) skyrocketing to dangerous levels. Given that, this year, California’s rainy season is starting nearly a month late, it is likely that we will see more wildfires this year. The effects of global climate change are starting to manifest. The Fremont Wellness Center is providing support for the most vulnerable communities in the face of climate catastrophe.
The Fremont Wellness Center hopes to be a resource for the communities most vulnerable to global climate change in the coming months. As is evidenced by their adaptive COVID-19 response, they have been able to meet people where they are at, and they will continue to do so
Astrid scott, BACS Wellness center coordinator
Q: So, can you tell me, in a nutshell, what the Fremont Wellness Center does?
Scott: Pre-COVID, we were a wellness center set up to help anybody in the community, and we were a safe space for people to come in here and get meals. We have a kitchen, so we make meals, we also have a computer lab so that people can apply for jobs online. We have groups that teach skills such as anger management, and we also have substance abuse programs. A lot of people who come into the community are homeless, so we have a program that helps with housing. We help them get on the waiting list for section 8, or people who don’t really know how the system works (CEA). Our hours were extended from 8AM-8PM, 7 days a week, so people can drop by for any resources they need. We have showers, a food pantry, a clothing pantry, we also have a program where people who have pets can come in here and pick up pet food. We work with a nonprofit that helps people with pets. That was before.
Since shelter-in-place, we had to close down our community room and computer lab and limit the people who come in. As of now, what we’re doing is that people call in and schedule a time to shower. They either let us know if they need clothing or a hygiene kit and we help them. Once they’re inside, they have to call and make an appointment. Since our kitchen is closed, we’ve linked up with local groups focused on food recovery, so they pick up meals from Kaiser meals and share them with us so we share them with the community. We also work with volunteers in the Fremont area, there’s a group called Feeding the Hungry that we work with. There’s a kitchen in Milpitas that still has a kitchen, and they drop off meals three times a week. It’s been a huge help, since we’re able to provide those meals to the homeless community and the increasing amount of families who need food. Since shelter-in-place, we didn’t get a lot of families since our program is adult only. We tailor our services, such as grocery box giveaways. We’re trying to serve our community based on what they need right now.
Q: Why is the center interested in becoming a resilience hub?
Scott: Part of it was, on a personal level, at the beginning of shelter in place, I felt unprepared like everyone else did. What can I do? How can I best serve the community? How can we be more knowledgeable in these kinds of situations because we don’t know what’s going to happen in the future. Back in April, we started going through our emergency kits and all of that stuff expired. We need to learn more about this. The services we provide might not look like this in a couple a months, and we need to keep up with what the Fremont community really needs.
Q: You talked about being prepared, what other events that you feel like you need to be prepared for?
Scott: Something my team has been talking about is the heat wave that is coming in the summer. We’re also thinking about other natural disasters, but based on the patterns that I’ve seen, I know that the needs during the summer. Is there a space that we can provide a cooling station? We’ve been really thinking along those lines.
Also, last summer, when we had the air quality issues, we didn’t have the resources to be an air quality center, which would have been ideal. So if anything like that happens this summer, we want to be prepared, and we want to be able to provide that service. We also want to become a vaccination site. We work with the city of Fremont to do testing with the fire department, so anything to provide the best services that we can.
Q: Why do you do this work? Why do you think it’s important?
Scott: Basically, I feel that it’s a really fulfilling job for me, and by working with BACs and being involved, I’ve seen so many people succeed and their lives change. That’s why I do this. I believe that there are people capable of changing and there are so many people who have lost hope, and we’re here to provide hope.
Q: What does the future look like for BACs and the Wellness Center?
Scott: BACS has not stopped going into the community, BACS has not stopped reaching out to people who need to get tested and vaccinated. The way we’re headed is to continue providing and to not take a back seat. If you think about it, all of the social services offices are closed, and there’s no way for people to get phones anymore, they have to be on the phone for hours and hours to get their stimulus check. The library is closed, and you can’t apply for a job online. So, a lot of our employees are providing services and meeting people where they’re at. As far as the wellness center here in Fremont, depending on what the CDC says, it depends on when we’ll open our doors. There’s a lot to think about.
The Fremont Wellness Center hopes to be a resource for the communities most vulnerable to global climate change in the coming months. As is evidenced by their adaptive COVID-19 response, they have been able to meet people where they are at, and they will continue to do so.
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!
