Health
St. Mary’s Center in West Oakland helps some of the 71,000 seniors in Alameda County who do not have enough money to meet their basic needs; that is half of the people in Alameda County who are 65 and over. But the center is just one node in the complex and incomplete web of aid for seniors who do not have enough money to live on. “Forget the issue of any kind of dementia, long-term chronic mental health issues, substance abuse issues—just be homeless and experience the trauma of that and then figure this out,” said Carol Johnson, the director of St. Mary’s.
At the screening in Chinatown Wednesday night of the four documentaries made by 12 young men in the Warriors for Peace pilot project, the excitement of having produced and appearing in publicly distributed content seemed to fascinate the 70 or so young people who gathered for the premiere. Many showed a familiarity with the stories told, and moments of silence punctuated a few intense scenes.
When Kendra Scalia-Carrow discovered the Bay Area Outreach and Recreation Program’s (BORP) Power Soccer group in 2006, she had no interest in joining the team. The 28-year-old, who suffers from Spinal Muscular Atrophy, had never played a sport. But as soon as she kicked the ball, she was hooked.
In 2009, Scalia-Carrow, an Americans with Disabilities Act program analyst for the city of Oakland, decided to try out for the U.S. National Power Soccer team. Despite having only played the sport for three years, Scalia-Carrow was chosen as one of only eight players on the starting roster at the 2011 FIFPA World Cup in Paris.
This year’s Free Summer Lunch Program for kids and teens begins this week in locations throughout the city of Oakland. The program was established to provide breakfast and lunch to people age 18 and under to fill in the gap that is often left in the number of meals kids receive once the school semester ends.
On Wednesday, participants in the new Warriors for Peace program will present their video productions and narratives at a showcase to be held in Oakland, marking the end of 32 weeks of hands-on training in the production of short video narratives and interviewing skills that have enabled young men of color from the Bay Area to tell stories based on their life experiences.
Festival celebrates Juneteenth, location of new Phat Beets market and plans for a collective kitchen
Saturday’s celebration combined the re-opening of Phat Beets Produce farmers market at its new location, the opening of a new on-site community kitchen collective and the observance of Juneteenth, a US holiday honoring African American heritage and commemorating June 19, 1865, the day many slaves in Texas learned they had been freed by the Emancipation Proclamation in 1863.
“I am Hawaiian, Russian Jew, Italian, Portuguese, Native American, and I’m pretty sure, English. I am a mutt.” That’s how Lani Riccobuono, one of the newly registered donors on the National Bone Marrow Program’s Be The Match Registry described herself as she signed up to be a donor two weeks ago.
The Oakland Unified School District has proposed a new plan that will expand its healthy meals program by updating meal service facilities on campuses throughout the district, allowing schools to increase the number of campuses that can serve freshly prepared food.
As part of a program called Rethinking School Lunch in Oakland, OUSD Nutrition Services Director Jennifer LeBarre and Zenobia Barlow, executive director of the Center for Ecoliteracy, created an outline of options to expand and improve the overall district-wide food service
The second-to-last Oakland Unified School District board meeting before the summer recess began Wednesday night with members of the teachers’ union demanding a new contract on the steps outside the district’s office, and ended with those same teachers becoming angry, tired and frustrated at having to wait six hours to present their proposal to the board.