Our Partners
East Bay Regional Parks District
The East Bay Regional Park District is a system of beautiful parklands in Alameda and Contra Costa counties to the east of San Francisco. The system comprises 73 parks spanning across 125,000 acres; 1,250 miles of trails; 55 miles of shoreline. We manage and preserve natural and cultural resources for all to enjoy and protect. The regional parks are ideal for healthful recreation and environmental education.
Oakland Parks and Recreation Foundation
Oakland Parks and Recreation Foundation is the go-to partner for activating, building and championing Oakland’s parks and recreation system. We make equitable investments through a well-established process of advocacy, partnership, fundraising and project execution. We conduct community surveys to identify needs, then work with our network of 100+ municipal and community groups to form sustainable public-private partnerships. We raise money from public and private sources to provide funding and contribute project administration expertise to bring programs to fruition in the community.
Planting Justice
Founded in 2009, Planting Justice is a grassroots organization with a mission to empower people impacted by mass incarceration and other social inequities with the skills and resources to cultivate food sovereignty, economic justice, and community healing. With a current staff of 60 full-time employees including 30 formerly incarcerated people, PJ’s suite of 5 inter-connected programs impact thousands of low-income residents every year in the CA Bay Area. PJ’s unique and holistic set of programs is gaining national and international attention for the innovative for-profit/nonprofit model PJ has implemented in the CA Bay Area, but the true power and potential lies in the scalability and replicability of the PJ model nationally. PJ’s Co-Founders, board, and staff are intent on creating a model that can lead to structural and systemic change in our nation’s food system, with the recognition that our collective survival and arising national consciousness urgently demands successful and replicable models that demonstrate how a just transition towards regenerative and equitable food economies is possible.
Black Cultural Zone
The purpose of the Black Cultural Zone Community Development Corporation, a California nonprofit corporation founded in 2019, is to “innovate, incubate, inform and elevate community driven projects that allow our people and culture to “THRIVE”.
Innovate: to make changes in something established, especially by introducing new methods, ideas, or products
Incubate: to maintain at optimal environmental conditions for growth and development.
Inform: to communicate knowledge
Elevate: to lift something up, to promote, or to boost
We work on behalf of, and with, the Black Community with a focus on current and legacy East Oakland residents, businesses, entrepreneurs, organizations and artists. Our work, however, is of benefit to the larger Oakland community particularly those most at risk of displacement here in Oakland. The barrier we face is the rising cost of living amidst stagnant or declining community wealth for legacy and current community members. The barriers to wealth building are tied to disproportionate levels of high unemployment, high underemployment, low business ownership and limited economic opportunity. This suppression reflects decades of public/private disinvestment and other systemic and institutional barriers.
East Bay Permanent Real Estate Cooperative
EB PREC aligns the technical, financial, and organizational inputs to support Black, Indigenous, People of Color, and allied communities to cooperatively organize, finance, purchase, and steward mixed-use and residential property in the East Bay.
In addition to community members and partner organizations, staff from the following City departments had supporting roles in the “Better Neighborhoods Same Neighbors” proposal:
- City Administrator’s Office
- City Attorney’s Office
- Economic & Workforce Development
- Housing & Community Development
- Mayor’s Office
- Oakland Public Library
- Oakland Workforce Development Board
- Transportation
- Parks, Recreation & Youth Development
- Planning & Building
- Public Works
- Race & Equity
- Tree Services
- East Oakland Neighborhood Initiative
