It Takes A Village

Dear Friends,

This Monday, August 10 is the first day of school for Oakland Unified School District students. For over 6 months now, school administrators, educators, parents, and caregivers have been struggling with how to balance our children’s need for quality education and socialization with the risks of COVID-19. For low-income, immigrant, and other underserved communities, these decisions are further exacerbated by the lack of access to technology, healthcare, food, and other resources, as well as language barriers.

At EBALDC, we understand that providing quality affordable housing is just a start. Programs that strengthen community infrastructure that support our youngest residents and their families is key to building healthy communities. Thanks to initial funding from the Oakland Fund for Children and Youth (OFCY) our Neighborhood & Economic Development team has been able to develop and grow programs that provide early childhood support to parents, quality STEAM¹-based education to elementary-aged children, leadership opportunities to youth, and college and career pathways for young adults. Collaborations with over 15 partners, including schools and youth organizations, have further enriched our Youth Programs. These programs have been crucial to ensuring our communities are healthy when the COVID-19 pandemic hit. They will become essential as this current school year begins online.

To develop early childhood resiliency, the Healthy Havenscourt Cub House program has been working with BANANAS to provide playgroups, family resource navigation, and a Parent University.  The Parent University was adapted from United Way Bay Area’s two-generation framework that helps parents of 0-5 age children connect with each other. It also provides financial preparedness courses from SparkPoint Oakland. Despite our shifts to virtual sessions, we’ve had record attendance and more parents taking on financial coaching than ever before. Additional sessions will start September 8.

For many of our youth and teens, not being able to be with their friends, and with very few outlets to release their energy, programs focusing on mental health and creative thinking became front and center. In partnership with Creative Health Services, the Lion’s Pride Afterschool program hosted weekly online engagements with Social-Emotional Art videos. In addition, we were able to provide one-one-one art therapy sessions with a mental health counselor, who worked with us to create a Social Emotional, Afro-Futurism workbook, the Transformative Heroes Project, that focused on creating super heroes that help deal with negative emotions. Youth who had participated in hip hop classes with Destiny Arts prior to SIP were able to perform what they had been practicing during the Healthy Havenscourt Block Party. And our self-directed Teen Book Club has been meeting weekly to discuss books themed on people of color dystopia, including “Street Life, Poverty Gangs and a PHD”, “The Poet X”, “The Darkest Mind” and “Maze Runner”. Finally, this past July, young adults completed 3 weeks of the Catalyst Technology Summer camp with the Hidden Genius Project, learning software engineering and game design. 

With unemployment rates soaring and especially impacting those in the service industry, we were even more determined that we continue supporting the young adults who are part of The Roaring Forward Young Adult Stipend Program.  This program provides employment opportunities for young adults. Throughout the summer, they were integral in our food program with the Oakland Unified School District that distributed 1,500 grab and go meals. They were also crucial in providing information to residents by distributing informational flyers. At the same time, they received financial coaching from EBALDC’s SparkPoint Oakland, as well as received job skills training including resume-building, PPE safety, and professionalism in the workplace. Supported by the United Way Bay Area, our Havenscourt Youth Job Initiative has transformed into online Career Exploration Workshops where young adults were able to learn and ask questions from professionals in the health care industry this summer.  

As the school year starts, Lion’s Pride will support Oakland schools

Outdoor, small-group hip hop classes with Destiny Arts will continue. With books from the Moving Forward Institute, Lion’s Pride will offer homework help and mental health counseling sessions. Our Roaring Forward Program will interview, hire, and train seven new high schoolers as temporary employees working remotely with EBALDC for the first time as opposed to a stipend program. We will be continuing Career Exploration Zooms, job skills workshops, and financial coaching. 

As you can see, it’s been a very busy 6 months for EBALDC’s Youth Programs. We have been able to build substantive and effective programming from the cradle to career that have proved even more essential as we sheltered-in-place. The diversity of programming for our youth has been crucial to ensuring the long-term health and wellness of our youth and our families.

But, more needs to be done. We need your assistance. With no vaccine available yet, schools continuing online learning, low-income youth struggle with finding the capacity to engage in remote learning, and we want to make sure our youth do not get left behind. While cash donations specifically for Youth Programs are very appreciated, we also would appreciate in-kind donations, including:

Please contact us at volunteer@ebaldc.org if you are able to provide in-kind donations.

Thank you!

In community,

Joshua Simon, CEO

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¹ STEAM = Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts and Math (STEAM) education