HOPE Collaborative members collectively developed a Theory of Change during a retreat in 2015. Community anchors, particularly churches, schools, and families, are the foundation of change; they ground and serve as the starting point for all of HOPE’s work. Community institutions that are anchored in Oakland’s flatland neighborhoods serve as key gathering spaces and points of connection and community-building, helping to strengthen social cohesion, forming the social fabric of neighborhoods, and giving rise to grassroots leadership. Strong, united communities with a shared sense of culture and identity unify to produce cultural shifts for the betterment of those communities.
HOPE began its work by partnering with respected community institutions and engaging their members through listening sessions, mapping sessions, and community dialogues. Community anchors remain core to HOPE’s membership as the collaborative implements its place-based work. Grassroots leaders organically emerge through this process over time, and many have joined HOPE as Action Team members and Youth Action Board members and progressed through HOPE’s leadership development ladder to become Project Leaders and Steering Committee members. A key turning point and marker of success for HOPE Collaborative was the shift in leadership from being majority organization and agency representatives to becoming majority community residents. This untraditional composition of HOPE’s leadership bodies, specifically its Steering Committee and Executive Committees, generates new ways of thinking and doing, bringing the cultural shifts occurring in community into the way that the collaborative functions and behaves in community, so that shifting cultural norms becomes an iterative process with HOPE as a catalyst.
The unique composition of HOPE’s membership and collaborations and resultant creative thinking it inspires gives rise to innovative, community-driven social enterprise with great potential for transforming the local food system and built environment. Examples include Last Mile Foods, Healthy Corner Store Project, and community and youth-led gardens and orchards. None of these initiatives are unique on their own; there are plenty of food distribution, healthy retail, and urban agriculture projects in communities. However, the process by which HOPE creates and implements these initiatives is what sets them apart from the rest. The intentionality around community-driven change, the way leadership development is built into the process of enterprise design and implementation, and the centrality of community voice and decision-making every step of the way gives HOPE’s initiatives a unique character and community credibility that continues to build community support for the work.
Alameda County Healthy Retail Program has awarded contracts to HOPE’s Healthy Corner Store Project for the past two years to implement demonstration projects of healthy retail interventions. OSNI has prioritized the Healthy Corner Store Project as a top “catalyst project” for whom the City of Oakland is seeking funding. These relationships serve as key examples of HOPE’s role as a mission-critical “institutional partner” to government agencies. HOPE’s strength at developing political allies and champions will continue to be critical to its long-term success and sustainability.
As political allies become more involved in HOPE’s work, they build more personal relationships with HOPE’s community leaders, facilitating an authentic, two-way sharing and learning. HOPE’s leadership development programming and trainings build capacity of community members to engage in policy advocacy and serve in leadership positions within HOPE and in the broader community. Some individuals now represent HOPE on other aligned coalitions and initiatives, such as East Oakland Building Healthy Communities, ALL IN Alameda County, and more. As HOPE members continue to represent the collaborative in the broader community, build their advocacy and leadership skills, and deepen their relationships with political leaders, we expect to further develop a leadership pipeline to shift power, not just within the collaborative, but within Oakland.
HOPE began its work by partnering with respected community institutions and engaging their members through listening sessions, mapping sessions, and community dialogues. Community anchors remain core to HOPE’s membership as the collaborative implements its place-based work. Grassroots leaders organically emerge through this process over time, and many have joined HOPE as Action Team members and Youth Action Board members and progressed through HOPE’s leadership development ladder to become Project Leaders and Steering Committee members. A key turning point and marker of success for HOPE Collaborative was the shift in leadership from being majority organization and agency representatives to becoming majority community residents. This untraditional composition of HOPE’s leadership bodies, specifically its Steering Committee and Executive Committees, generates new ways of thinking and doing, bringing the cultural shifts occurring in community into the way that the collaborative functions and behaves in community, so that shifting cultural norms becomes an iterative process with HOPE as a catalyst.
The unique composition of HOPE’s membership and collaborations and resultant creative thinking it inspires gives rise to innovative, community-driven social enterprise with great potential for transforming the local food system and built environment. Examples include Last Mile Foods, Healthy Corner Store Project, and community and youth-led gardens and orchards. None of these initiatives are unique on their own; there are plenty of food distribution, healthy retail, and urban agriculture projects in communities. However, the process by which HOPE creates and implements these initiatives is what sets them apart from the rest. The intentionality around community-driven change, the way leadership development is built into the process of enterprise design and implementation, and the centrality of community voice and decision-making every step of the way gives HOPE’s initiatives a unique character and community credibility that continues to build community support for the work.
Alameda County Healthy Retail Program has awarded contracts to HOPE’s Healthy Corner Store Project for the past two years to implement demonstration projects of healthy retail interventions. OSNI has prioritized the Healthy Corner Store Project as a top “catalyst project” for whom the City of Oakland is seeking funding. These relationships serve as key examples of HOPE’s role as a mission-critical “institutional partner” to government agencies. HOPE’s strength at developing political allies and champions will continue to be critical to its long-term success and sustainability.
As political allies become more involved in HOPE’s work, they build more personal relationships with HOPE’s community leaders, facilitating an authentic, two-way sharing and learning. HOPE’s leadership development programming and trainings build capacity of community members to engage in policy advocacy and serve in leadership positions within HOPE and in the broader community. Some individuals now represent HOPE on other aligned coalitions and initiatives, such as East Oakland Building Healthy Communities, ALL IN Alameda County, and more. As HOPE members continue to represent the collaborative in the broader community, build their advocacy and leadership skills, and deepen their relationships with political leaders, we expect to further develop a leadership pipeline to shift power, not just within the collaborative, but within Oakland.