Community Partners
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Purple and blue Bay Area Creative (BAC) logo with icons for dance, a microphone and a camera embedded in the letters (in that order)
Build Art Ecosystems With Us
Bay Area Creative provides opportunities for creative expression and the study of the cultural impacts of famous and contemporary works of spoken word poetry that empower individuals to develop empathic communication skills and foster positive change in themselves and their communities. We work predominantly with families of color in under-served neighborhoods in the geographic areas of San Francisco, Oakland, Richmond, Berkeley, Pittsburgh, Hayward, Daly City, Pacifica and San Jose.
We envision a world where people listen courageously, speak thoughtfully and act equitably in times of conflict and in times of joy.
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Logo for Barrios Unidos: black background. White letters : top ‘Santa Cruz. below: Barrios Unidos’. Right of text: two hands clasped in white outline.
Barrios Unidos is a community organizsation in Santa Cruz ..
“—
-The California Coalition of Barrios Unidos began as a community based peace movement in the violent streets of urban California in 1977 and incorporated as a non-profit organization in 1993. Over the past twenty-five years Barrios Unidos has developed a model that seeks to reclaim and restore the lives of struggling youth while promoting unity amongst families and neighbors through community building efforts.
Our Mission: To promote multicultural social justice, nonviolence, and economic equity through cultural healing, civic leadership, and community development
Santa Cruz Barrios Unidos currently operates eight community programs. Each lies on different parts of the life cycle. From elementary youth to elders within the incarcerated community, we are there to provide specialized community support during all developmental stages of life.
Our work seeks to counter oppression, trauma, cultural misappropriation and spiritual bankruptcy by maintaining a position and place of love and understanding.”
-descriptions and mission from their website and their page on the SC library.
Poppy Seeds Collective, which I’m a part of, has partnered with them to host several benefits for the Gazan families we support. They provide a community food bank and have their own printing shop where you can support their work!
RichOak Events is a spoken word and literary arts program based in the East Bay region of the SF Bay Area, fiscally sponsored by Bay Area Creative, a 501(c)3 nonprofit. We are dedicated to providing equitable platforms for self expression to underserved and intentionally silenced communities both through virtual media and in person interactive engagements. Our top priority at RichOak Events (Berkeley Slam, Oakland Slam, The Alchemy Open Mic and Thee Virtual Open Mic) is to facilitate a space to empower people of all genders, sexualities, ethnicities, abilities and ages to tell their own stories in ways that will produce positive change on a local, national, and global level.
“We also challenge the notion that anyone needs to be given a voice, or that anyone anywhere can be a ‘voice for the voiceless’. Regardless of whether you vocalize, people are never ‘voiceless’. In reality, they are being overlooked and intentionally ignored. Our top commitment is to provide spaces where persons of any and all genders, sexualities, ethnicities, abilities, & ages can tell their own unique stories– stories which convey their attitude, their personality, and their character.”
- Thank you to “Voices of Today” for informing the second part of our mission statement.
Mission:
Raise awareness of causes that move humanity in the right direction
Donate a portion of each sale to said causes
Put more tools of change in people's hands
Our Promises
Flags For Good donates a portion of each flag to a relevant world-changing organization. We've now been able to donate over $325,000 to amazing humans on the front lines of tackling our biggest problems. Learn all about the "For Good" we are able to do on Our Impact page.
We also promise to do our best to make our flags, and deliver them to you, in the most Earth-conscious way available to us. We use as little plastic as we can in our supply chain, offset our carbon shipping footprint, use paper in all of our packaging, and ship to you in eco-friendly mailing bags. “
-from their website
I became an affiliate with Flags For Good last summer to create a Disability Pride Hand Flag since I noticed at Pride each year almost no one had the disability pride flag anywhere. I am trying to get Disability Pride Hand Flags into all the places who want to carry Pride flags and build an awareness of disability justice. I hope to facilitate more conversations about access and equity including about covid, and what it means to make spaces truly accessible for disabled folks.
Good Cause Group
About Us
Good Cause Group explores innovative ways of evolving organizational practices to support a regenerative environment, gender and racial equity, and global social wellness.
Approach
We are firm believers in the potential of cross-sector collaborations and human innovation. That's why we actively forge partnerships across various sectors to catalyze institutional, systemic, and cultural transformations. Our aim is to direct fresh resources towards organizations dedicated to upholding fundamental human rights and advancing the greater good.
Heart centered collaborations are at the core of everything we do. From universities to social enterprises, community-based organizations to international non-government organizations, we leverage our respective strengths to create and maintain sustainable solutions for our future. “
-from the website
Since 2020 I have been interning with Good Cause to learn development skills like grant writing, prospect research, community partnership management to secure grants and other funding opportunities for community based organizations and mutual aid projects and community members that I care for. I’ve been mentored by the founder of Good Cause and am so grateful to be learning how to decode the development and grant writing universe so I can bring this knowledge back to community and share the insitutional knowledge accessibly.
Image ID: Good Cause Group logo with light blue feather graphic and white text on dark blue background
Image ID: Santa Cruz Arts Council Logo. Black background, green triangle with a black C in the enter. In white letters to the right it says ‘Arts Council Santa Cruz County’ with each word stacked vertically.
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Poppy Seeds Collective logo with a Keffiyeh and Poppy seed pod with seeds drifting out.
Poppy Seeds Collective is a group of friends from various coalitions based (currently) in the Monterey Bay who are all deeply invested in moving funds towards people in great need in Gaza. I am a member of the collective and we raise money for people in Gaza with whom we have a direct relationship, by posting, tabling, conducting raffles, and putting on events like art markets and yard sales. We are mostly all neurodivergent and many are disabled; we believe that disability justice is intertwined with supporting Gazan families and communities.
We hold anti-capitalist and anti-colonial values, including that of resource equality and the massive movement of capital towards those who are disadvantaged by capitalism/colonialism which is currently necessary to accomplish this. For that reason, we believe that to be invested in equality and an end to violent colonialism, we must move money!!! Mutual aid for as long as it takes!
We often collaborate with local community organizations like Barrios Unidos, Santa Cruz Jews for Palestine, UCSJ4P, RCNV, Louden Nelson Center as well as local artists (most of us are also artists) who we host at our markets. If you’d like to be involved with our work or would like to know more, please reach out.
If you’d like to learn more about the families we support and what their needs are, you can learn more at my page titled Palestine Solidarity.
The button below will take you to our linktree with more information about our work and our instagram where we post about upcoming events.
Image ID: All Things Disability Equity logo with purple text and border on light gray background.
All Things Disability Equity (ATDE) works to eliminate ableism and advance disability equity through education, leadership development that centers disabled people, and disability-informed practices that move beyond minimum compliance.
Our work is grounded in the human rights model of disability. Disability is a value-neutral identity that signals access needs. Meeting those needs is a societal responsibility.
ATDE partners with organizations, public agencies, and communities to treat disability as a core equity issue and to create systems that result in real access, participation, and leadership for disabled people.
Current offerings include:
Anti-ableism education and training
Accessibility and disability equity consulting
Creative problem-solving sessions for disabled individuals (sliding scale)
Contact: Michele@AllThingsDisability.org
Schedule a meeting via ZCal:https://zcal.co/micheleatd
The Santa Cruz Arts Council:
“We serve as a connector between artists, arts networks, government leaders, arts advocates, arts educators, and arts education organizations.
Through grants to artists and arts organizations, arts education programs that serve more than 20,000 youth across Santa Cruz County, and community initiatives such as Open Studios, the Tannery Arts Center, and the Watsonville Center for the Arts, we help Santa Cruz County thrive.
Explore toolkits, professional development, funding opportunities, and directories to support your creative journey or arts organization.
-from their website
They offer and connect to grants, residencies, jobs, Studio opportunities , internships and a variety of other opportunities for artists and art organizations and art education.
This past Spring, I received a grant from them to attend the masks required slam poetry competition, Midwest Mashup in Minneapolis with the Invisible Poets Collective, my incredible all disabled/chronically ill covid conscious team. We literally practiced on zoom for seven months.
Find more resources here
Image ID: Flags For Good Logo is a small flag waving on the left side of the words FLAGS for GOOD in black letters. It is encircled by a black rectangle.