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Ubuntu Green is seeking funding to continue its operations through our Campaign for the Community. We need your help so that we can continue to address environmental injustices, promote healthy food access, and inspire community-led land use decision-making.
Ubuntu Green was founded in January of 2009 and began operating in Sacramento, California’s historic Oak Park neighborhood that June. Founder Charles L. Mason, Jr. wanted to see greener communities with greater healthy food access and fewer transportation barriers for low-income residents and communities of color.
Charles named the organization Ubuntu Green to reflect the Ubuntu philosophy of Southern Africa. A person with Ubuntu is open and available to others, affirming of others, and does not feel threatened that others are able and good. He or she has the self-assurance that comes from knowing that he or she is a part of the greater whole and is diminished when others are humiliated, devalued, tortured, or oppressed. As Bishop Desmond Tutu said, “I in you and you in me.”
Ubuntu Green was formed to develop community-based programs, promoting models of sustainabililty in development, and advocating for policies focused on the systemic change needed to transform underservered communities and promote community engagement.
With these firm principles in place, a collective group of individuals from all aspects of nonprofit, public, and corporate life came together during a four-month period beginning in the spring of 2009 to provide critical guidance and direction to the Ubuntu Green team. Some of these individuals still serve on the Board of Directors and Advisory Council. The growth and success of Ubuntu Green could not have been achieved without the time and input of this group.
Ubuntu Green, in partnership with Oak Park Weed and Seed, hosted the Green Oak Park and South Sacramento event in 2009. The event ran for two consecutive years and was the organization’s first public activity. More than 300 residents, organizations and sponsors participated, including local elected officials, the Sacramento Municipal Utility District (SMUD), and UC Davis Health System.
Since its founding, Ubuntu Green has provided active leadership in the Sacramento Building Healthy Communities Collaborative (SBHC), Sacramento Regional Food Systems Collaborative, Sacramento City Superintendent’s Healthy Food Caucus, Greenwise Sacramento, the Coalition and Regional Equity, and the Healthy Sacramento Coalition. The organization has also been active in national and statewide coalitions promoting social, environmental, and food justice, as well as transportation equity.
In the spring of 2010, Ubuntu Green launched the Home and Community Garden Project, which buily free garden boxes for families in North and South Sacramento and developed and promoted community gardens. The project built more than 180 community gardens and boxes have been built. The project included colloborations with Soil Born Farms, the Sacramento Yard Farmer, and UC Davis.
Ubuntu Green launched the Green Youth Leadership Team (G-Squad) in the summer of 2010. The G-Squad enlists high school and early college-age youth to become environmental stewards and to promote healthy food access and consumption. The team launched Ubuntu Urban Garden in the Oak Park neighborhood of Sacramento, turning a vacant and littered lot into a vibrant, youth-run space.
The organization started the Healthy Land Use Engagement Project (HLEP) as part of SBHC in 2010 to work in partnership with local residents and stakeholders to get them involved in changing the land use decision-making process in their communities. More than 400 residents, stakeholders and decision-makers have participated in this dynamic effort, leading to community-based plans and priorities. Key partners in this initiative include WALKSacramento, Calfiornia Capital FDIC, Legal Services of Northern California (LSNC), UC Davis Center for Regional Change, Youth Development Network, and Asian Resources Inc.
Later in 2010, Ubuntu Green partnered with the Coalition on Regional Equity (CORE) on the Environmental Justice Initiative that would provide additional support to HLEP and extend these efforts to the North Sacramento neighborhoods of Del Paso Heights and Noralto. This collaboration helped to launch the North Sacramento Initative, which brings the organization’s work to North Sacramento. It also led to the collaborative effort, the Brownfields and Vacant Spaces Campaign (BVS), which has brought together more than 80 stakeholders between 2011 and 2013 to develop solutions to eradicate brownfields and vacant spaces in the Sacramento area. The BVS has drafted action and policy recommendations in a guiding document, “From Wasted Spaces, To Healthy Spaces: Transforming Brownfields and Vacant Spaces in Sacramento,” as the team turns its efforts towards implementation strategies and broader engagement with the government and residents.
In September of 2011, Ubuntu Green was part of a coaliton that included the office of Councilmember Jay Schenirer and Legal Services of Northern California that worked to draft and pass an ordinance that allowed community gardens on private vacant lots, a practice that was previously prohibited. LSNC and Ubuntu Green would subsequently develop a brochure designed to inform and educate residents and organizations on the ordinance, with links to financial and technical assistance resources. Ubuntu Green continues to partner with the City and County of Sacramento, urban farmers and non-profits to improve urban agriculture policies, including successfully working with the Ubuntu Green co-founded, Sacramento Urban Agriculture Coalition to pass a comprehensive urban agriculture ordinance in the City of Sacramento.
In the winter of 2011 Ubuntu Green launched the Community Advocacy and Engagement Institute (Institute). The Institute was created to offer trainings on engagement and advocacy related to environmental, land use, built environment, and other related processes in an effort to build the capacity of residents and community groups. Also offered are conflict resoultion, structural racialization, advocacy, leadership, and strategic planning trainings.
In 2013, Ubuntu Green launched the Ubuntu Community Development Corporation (UCDC), folding in the Home and Community Garden Project and G-Squad and adding in efforts to eradicate brownfields, land banking, and promote youth jobs. The push to start UCDC is in response to the absence of redevelopment and other efforts to provide healthy community development.
In 2014 Ubuntu Green started the Sacramento Environmental Justice Working Group to directly address policy and regulatory barriers. The Working Group was inspired by all of our organizational work and partnerships, and particularly the reccomendations of the BVS and the increasing demands from residents to address environmental injustices in their communities. We also helped to establish the Sacramento Urban Agriculutre Coalition (SUAC) that is effectively working to reform urban agriculture policies and regulations in the City and County of Sacramento. Finally, we completed the Sacramento Buildinng Healthy Communities, Community Plan Charrette process that developed comprehensive community land use plans in the collaborative area.
Future work of the organization will be to support the ongoing developed of UCDC in Sacramento, and building SACEJ, while collaborating to support equitable community engagement process nationwide.
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