Day 4: Thursday 3/27

Day four included visits to People’s Grocery in West Oakland which provides low income residents access to healthy food choices. West Oakland is classified as a “food desert”, a place without access to fresh fruits and vegetables due to the lack of supermarkets in the city. People’s Grocery tries to fill this gap by providing access to fresh produce as well as education to residents of the local community on how to improve eating habits.



After lunch, we headed out to the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights. After a fascinating set of presentations on the Center’s work in the region, including Bay Area Police Watch and the Green Collar Jobs initiative, we were treated to an inspiring talk by Jakada Imani, executive director of the Ella Baker Center. Among the things that he emphasized, was how his job wasn’t “just a job”. Rather, along with his family, his career formed the core of his life. The lesson was one that we’ve been hearing all week: to be successfully in bringing about social change, you have to bring an uncommon level of passion, zeal, and intensity to your work.

After our visit with the folks at the Ella Baker Center we had a terrific chat with Britt Bravo, blogger, consultant, and all around super cool person. The session was designed to help us understand how we could think about careers, and how we could start implementing our ideas for social change today. We went through a brainstorming session on understanding how we could overcome the "blackholes" or obstacles in achieving our social goals and what it would take move our ideas forward. The meeting sparked a discussion that continued well after our visit and led to a fresh round of ideas on nonprofits and organizations that we could start once we were back at Stanford.