Youth Development Program

Homies Dinners

Every Wednesday Homies Dinners became a way for rival neighborhoods to cook, share food, hear from community speakers and to build as one larger community. The dinners grew from 20 young people into the 100s. Over time the popularity of those dinners increased. The dinners became so popular that we began to have weekly guests come and visit us including rapper, Immortal Technique, Tarika Lewis, who is the first woman to join the Black Panther Party, and many, many more. The young people at Homies Empowerment didn’t just want to hear from change makers they wanted to make history themselves.

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Jornalero (Daylaborer) Breakfast Program

Ventura Flores, one of those young people, after seeing the documentary “Which Way Home” came up with an idea to start a breakfast program for day laborers who were being mistreated in Oakland, CA. That breakfast program went on to exist for 3 and a half years and it was inspiring to see young people waking up before school to feed their own community. The Jornalero (Daylaborer) Breakfast Program was an example of the power of young people working together to take care of their community.  That program is the precursor to the now FREEdom Store as young people not only fed their community but they also organized clothing drives and even put together celebrations so that refugees who were thousands of miles from home could still celebrate the holidays.
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Youth Leadership Program, Adelante

The after-school circles began to evolve to include girls groups, boys groups, mental health spaces, and then a partnership was set-up with Arise High School to teach a youth leadership class called Adelante (Moving Forward). The Adelante Leadership Program helped to create a space where young people stepped up to lead in their community. They began to organize fundraising dinners to support undocumented students so that they too could attend college. This marked a turning point for Homies Empowerment where we went from an after-school program to one that would take place during the school day and we began to teach leadership classes along with Raza studies as well. Part of what made the learning dynamic was the constant field trips, 2-3 per month, that Homies Empowerment took to visit places such as SF State University and the studios of KQED. One of our educators, Jay Jasper Pugao would come in to teach young people Pilipino martial arts, Eskrima.