Part 3 of About - Healthy Economics
With all these programs, where do we begin?
We have already started…
When President Barack Obama stepped into office, one of the first things he did was change the way we celebrate the birthday of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
He changed Dr. King’s birthday, from “a day off” to “a day of service.
For the past two years, thousands of volunteers, all over the country, on Dr. King’s birthday, have found various projects in their own community to come together and volunteer to improve.
Over the past two years, two projects, we have spearheaded here in Oakland: Castlemont High school’s garden, and The Mo’ Better Food Educational Park, have attracted several hundred volunteers to come together to improve the community.
While, we have great success on these 1 day a year events, if anybody knows anything about planting a garden, it takes a lot more maintenance than one day a year can provide.
For this reason, we are suggesting all these programs to begin the first Saturday of each month with a follow up meeting/volunteer day the following 1st Saturday.
Therefore, in addition to hosting a once a year volunteer event for the year, we host 12 volunteer day (every 1st Saturday). The official website for these affairs is:
Each 1st Saturday Event contains three main components:
1) An Intergenerational Enterprise meeting
2) A Volunteer Project (ie. School garden, farmers market-social enterprise defined by community)
3) Kulture Freedom – Remembrance Educational Activities
(see Kulturefreedom.com
1stSaturdays.com will provide the details for the monthly volunteer days.
Through these monthly activities and constant communication within the community, we believe Healthy Economics can “systematically” expose and promote the opportunities of developing “green jobs’ through hands on initiatives.
Systematically because its an agreement between several organizations to plant here… have a farmers market there…a grocery store over there.We agree on their roles and responsibilities needed to feed ourselves.
Together, we ask all communities to come together and ask itself:
What type of operation do we need to feed ourselves? What type of management is necessary? What locations within the community can we utilize to improve our food system? How can this enterprise connect with the next generation i.e. high school students? How can it connect to oursenior citizens? How can it be used for job training, internships, and ownership for local residents?
