Much of Oakland is considered a "food desert" as the entire community area lacks access to supermarkets and access to affordable, fresh healthy food. Instead, low income communities in west and east Oakland are filled with fast food restaurants and liquor stores that disempowered the community, contributed to unhealthy lifestyles, and created socially and environmentally irresponsible food chains. The Oakland Food Connection or the OFC is working to improve the quality of life for residents by increasing their nutritional knowledge and access to healthy local food. Specifically, the OFC's mission is to: "promote nutritional awareness, access to healthy foods and the connections between people and our planet". The simplicity of the mission is strong because it makes it memorable and engaging for volunteers, donors, and staff. However, it could be strengthened by specifying the specific community it works in. It also should include the methods it tries to go about these large, over arching goals because it supports a variety of programs from farmers' markets to urban gardening programs. However, the actual work they engage in is not expressed in the mission statement. The mission statement also needs to be narrowed down so that it can be better used to guide the organization and help the users choose programs that should be pursued or expanded and omit those that are distracting from the proposed goals.
[...] (Fiscal sponsor, technical assistance, project partner) Bay Localize (Technical assistance, project partner) Oakland SOL (Sustaining Ourselves Locally) Dis-Scent Body Products Hip Hop Education Identity Music O'Melveny & Myers LLP (Pro-Bono legal services - Partnership through Volunteer Legal Services in San Francisco) Community Food Security Coalition (Awarded educator conference scholarships to OFC staff Fall 2005) Bioneers (Awarded youth educator conference scholarships to OFC staff Fall 2005) Food First Flacos: Unique Vegetarian Food Stewardship Council (funding for "the Purple Lawn Cafe" project : [...]
[...] As a community, we are in a time of change and I look forward to being with Oakland Food Connection during that movement forward." Critical needs and recommendations After reviewing OFC's management functions it is clear that OFC needs to hire an additional staff member. This will help OFC to move from a stage two organization on the Nonprofit Life Stages spectrum (Class 2/1/10) to a stage three organization that focuses on the question of how to build the organization to be viable. [...]
[...] To measure impact the OFC could use these numbers again along with how many students they serve through their programs and whether or not they continue to work with sustainable food projects. To measure capacity, OFC could measure growth in fundraising and public funding as well as in staff and administrative growth. Alliances ''Partnerships and collaborations are essential for community projects, illustrating the strength of working together to serve a greater community good.'', as one can read on their website. [...]
[...] OFC believes that they can help residents improve their food situation and quality of life if they can bring the appropriate resources back into Oakland such as fresh food, forums within the community to discuss these issues, nutritional education, and urban gardening resources (Jason Harvey). OFC is a stage two nonprofit because although it has established a board and programs for realizing its goals it lacks important evaluation metrics, sustainable funding, and staff resources. They are led mainly by a charismatic founder and community support around their mission and goals. [...]
[...] instance, Oakland Unity High School is a major partner of OFC. They work with Unity High students and staff to sustain Unity's 18-garden-bed food system. Their approach is to ''simply remind Unity's youth that they already know how to grow food''. The program is made to enable the students to teach courses on garden development to K-8 students. Students are encouraged to learn how to prepare simple, nutritious meals from the food they grow. Every week, food bags are also distributed to student participants to share with their families. [...]
APA Style reference
For your bibliographyOnline reading
with our online readerContent validated
by our reading committee
