One of our local community partners is Healthy Oakland. (They’re literally just 5 blocks away from us). On Saturday June 1, 2007 Healthy Oakland put on a slamming event called the “Power of Health and Being Well” Summer Street Festival. It was off the hook with all kinds of great organizations and community folks running […]

We’re now in our second summer season at our farm in Sunol. We’ve learned a lot over the year and are improving and refining our methods. We’ve expanded our farm staff and interns and our Farm Manager, Jason Uribe, is deepening his knowledge and leadership for a larger scale farming effort. It’s an exciting time […]

If you were re-routed through West Oakland via West Grand Avenue soon after the collapse of the MacArthur Maze you may have seen posters stating “Welcome Thru West Oakland” and “Enjoy Our 53 Liquor Stores”. This witty street humor took advantage of the heightened traffic along West Grand Ave to point out a critical […]

There is often a lack of inclusion and participation of the private sector in the work of building local food systems. For example, the recently funded Oakland Food & Fitness Collaborative doesn’t have a single private sector partner from the food industry. This is a huge gap in our strategy and we need to think […]

The Land Use and Health Project, a project of the Public Health Law Program at the Public Health Institute released an article in their Spring 2007 Healthy Planning Newsletter about an announcement made by the British mega-chain supermarket Tesco that the company plans to open 100-150 stores, up to 3,000 square feet each, in the […]

Many West Oakland residents went to Eugene’s Market at the Jack London Gateway Shopping Center over the weekend to do their food shopping and instead found a posted letter from the shopping center management saying they were as surprised as everyone else that the store had closed, and that they’re looking for a new grocery […]

We have begun to plan for a new project called the Growing Food, Jobs & Justice Program, which will launch in the summer of 2007. This program will develop a social enterprise model that enables low-income residents of West Oakland to have access to local, organic produce at affordable prices and local youth to have […]