Erik Crew is People’s Grocery’s new Outreach and Education Coordinator. He grew up in Cincinatti, Ohio, and graduated from Yale University with a degree in African-American Studies. He then joined Teach for America to work in Chicago’s South Side. After a year of hard work, he decided to move to the Bay Area, and realized that People’s Grocery fit with his passion for self-reliant personal and community growth. He wrote this blog to contribute to this series on People’s Grocery Voices:

I had my first experience with the People’s Grocery gardens at the 55th street garden, lined with beds of lettuce, garlic, onions and carrots–a connection to the natural amongst the concrete of Oakland. I spent my
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Geralina Fortier is the Education and Outreach intern at People’s Grocery. She has worked at People’s Grocery for three years, and is currently a member of the board, and head of the Peer 2 Peer program. Geralina is currently attending the Bauman College Nutrition Educator Program, partly funded in her tuition by People’s Grocery, where she studies topics such as digestion, micronutrients, diet planning and
evaluation, business practices, weight management, and allergy immune systems. Upon completion of her education, Geralina will work at People’s Grocery as a Peer Nutrition Educator. This posting is from an
interview with Geralina on November 13, 2006:

Hey, everybody this is Geralina Fortier, checking in with Miss Elia. Today is exactly a month away from the
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Greetings!

Lately I’ve been absolutely elated and driven. I recently completed Bauman College’s Nutrition Educator Program after nine months! What a relief and honor intertwined in a knot! Peer to Peer here i come. I even wrote a song for Peer to Peer called Super Healthy! It’s a hip hop song that I’m hoping to record and put on You Tube, KMEL, KPFA,  Bauman College’s international website plus on T.V one day. Youth Uprising, Galin with Covenant House, and a few others; i have my eye on you all and am looking forward to recording the song.  Music is good for the soul and it is mood boosting because it releases endorphins your natural Valium and good mood neurotransmitter.Good quality
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myspace.com/peoplesgrocery

People’s Grocery has been looking for more efficient ways to put the word there about People’s Grocery. We have tried many different methods of advertising a such as: fliers, public speaking, fund raisers, we even flew eight staff members, two interns, and a contracted worker all the way to the District of Columbia to go to a Rooted In Community ( R.I.C) conference and visited organizations along the east coast contributing to the Food Justice movement just like us. Those methods  were all quite effective and were still looking for more.

This time we’re using My space. My space has over 140 million members and still counting. Sometimes I feel like Myspace has few too many creeks and
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Juhandryn Dessames grew up in West Oakland, and has been the Bookkeeper and Office Manager of People’s Grocery since last January.  She is working on a couple of classes to fulfill her transfer requirements so that hopefully by the summer of ‘07 she’ll be able to transfer to Cal State in Hayward where they have a working adults program.  She is currently working to get scholarships.  She lives with her family in Emeryville. In this interview, she talked about attending the N.Y. Worker Cooperative 2nd Annual Conference as a People’s Grocery representative.

The trip started out on Friday.  The conference started out at a coop restaurant called Colors.  This was basically the
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Aswad Steele is the fourth eldest of twelve children.  He has two sons, ages three years, and six months today.  He has two god-daughters, with another one on the way.  Aswad was born in San Francisco, moved to Mississippi in second grade, and moved to West Oakland to finish high school.  He currently resides in San Francisco.  Previous to his employment with People’s Grocery, Aswad worked at a non-profit called Youth Opportunity, which helped students get into schools, get A + training, and put them through internships.  He started working at People’s Grocery in 2004, and has worked with the Mobile Market, in the storage warehouse, and has delivered after-school snacks to local schools.  Aswad is currently the garden assistant,
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Elia Gilbert moved to Oakland in August.  She is originally from Monroe, New York, and recently graduated from Oberlin College in Anthropology and Ethnomusicology.  Currently she is interning part-time at People’s Grocery, and is also employed with Spring Hill Farms to sell their cheese products at local farmer’s markets.  Her projects with People’s Grocery include t-shirt sales, writing up their Standard Operating Procedures, running the “People’s Grocery Voices” blog, office administration assistance, writing (such as press releases) and helping in the gardens.  This is a self-authored posting:

When I was still in New York, I was looking forward to a job in Oakland that would get me directly involved in the local community.  Coming straight out of the highly academic
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