Black History is World History : part 3 of our BHM story telling series
Hello Hello Beautiful People,
We hope this email finds you grounded and engaged. This last month plus has been quite the roller coaster. The antidote to all of this chaos keeps being lean into the community, support local, uplift our most vulnerable neighbors. Sadly we have been here before. We are hoping you all are finding new ways to deepen your own relationship with our local community, it is much needed.
This series was supposed to go out all in BHM but the reality of Black History being a 360, every day all the time celebration and us having a small team we are extending the celebration and storytelling. This mini series has been fun and an opportunity to reflect a bit as a team and also with community members.
Last month (February) was special, we got Black History Month Care Packages out to Black Elders, a few still have to be delivered and it has been so joyful celebrating our Elders. Market this past month (and always) was really beautiful with all kinds of special items including mustard and collard greens, plantains, sweet potatoes and red beans. DJ Afrekano played tunes, that upgrade is going to be hard to beat. Che Jawher made Palestinian fritters that were so delicious. We had an abundance of plants at the Market as well. The community always enjoys some plant love! It was nice to lean into joy and celebration, which is always a nourishing experience.
This newsletter, the third installment of this story telling adventure is all about EGC, it is definitely long and informative! A bit of our origin story, direct notes from our team, and what our programming is. We hope this helps you to get to know our work and team a bit more.
Photos from our various community events.
How EGC started: In the fall of 2019 an Elder introduced co-founders AJ + Lillian under the guise that they would make good trouble together. The two started chatting and haven’t stopped since. Now we are celebrating five years of them making good trouble together.
When we originally were dreaming up EGC, we were planning on creating something that was more of a side project and focused on supporting Black + Brown Women and Femmes in the private sector with small grants, with cash mobs, networking, and collective trainings and other basic business support. And then the pandemic hit. AJ had been working with some local farmers and is a big fan of Dr. Booker T. Whatley and suggested we buy CSA boxes from local BIPOC farmers and give them away to local Black and Brown families. When we launched a fundraiser to do this, we raised over $35K in a week. AJ was like let’s double down, and we did. The community matched our excitement, and from there, things took off. By June of 2020 we were delivering CSA boxes to community members across the city, and we have been doing our food programming since. Today, we deliver to 225 Families a week and see another 180 at the Market each Thursday.
How we move and have built our body of work is very intentional. The way we are reimaging our food system is from a proactive approach. Our mainstream current food system relies on shipping food all over the world which impacts freshness and nutritional value, as well as being a major carbon producer. Within typical emergency or crisis food systems most of the food distributed is gleaned or expired food, coming from the leftovers of our mainstream food system (think grocery stores). Not only is this morally inept, it creates a lot of waste. We want to see solutions and models that move us forward, that empower the community, that are sustainable and forward thinking. EGCs food system vision is focused on local and uplifting the most marginalized among us. By sourcing the food we distribute from local Black + Brown Farms and BUYING the produce we are able to ensure freshness and optimal nutritional value, we are helping to build economic power in our small community, and we are also able to help curb carbon impacts by leaning into our local agriculture community. Within our model we are able to both support our community and boost the local agriculture community. It is the win-win for us!
Since our inception we have rolled out a variety of additional programming, all inspired from community requests. We really have that call and response dialed down, and through the ways we have answered community needs we have not wavered from leading with pushing tangible resources out into the community. Our community, the Black Community is not looking for more talking or planning, we need action and tangible support.
Photos from some of our 2024 Events.
Our Mission : Our mission is to inspire and create economic empowerment through authentic engagement and action within our community. We will bring forth healing from late-stage capitalism and colonialism through reparative and radical giving.
Our Vision : We envision a future where systems are designed to ensure that everyone can thrive and live their best lives.
Our Values : As an organization formed to address glaring inequities created by years of institutional bias, discriminatory policy and systematic divestment from Black and Indigenous communities, our values are strong.
Things that are really different about our work at EGC:
Give no strings attached
We believe in giving our community the best
We try to keep the money we raise in the community
We are proactive not reactive
We organize from an abolition center.
The term abolition scares many and what that means is we imagine a world and a society where we invest in people not prisons or property. We imagine a society where folks' needs are met and we are living in harmony with nature.
Lots of folks hear abolition and think that means chaos and no rule. They think abolition is about just defunding the police and abandoning the prison industrial complex, and that is a small part of abolition. Abolition is about reimaging public safety, reimaging society, and reimagining how we exist. Abolition calls for us to break up from a reactive system focused on punishment and harm to a proactive system that meets everyone's needs, which will drastically help decrease violence and many communal harms. Abolition is about creating a society where we prioritize people and the collective.
EGC Team
We have a small team at EGC. Just five staff members, five board members, and a gaggle of volunteers. We are small and mighty, we work really hard to bring this programming to life. When we are asking for more support it’s because we need it, there aren’t a bunch of bloated expenses happening around us.
Our volunteers are awesome and really dedicated, especially our CSA crew. It has been really beautiful getting to know our volunteers and building with them, many have been around for 2-5 years. Our volunteers help with all kinds of things from Market and weekly delivery, to warehouse things, to events, our Black Elder Garden Project and more. We are really grateful for their time and dedication to this work.
Photos from various programming .
2024 Impact Report
We currently serve over 400 BIPOC families with weekly produce boxes, pantry items, and monthly proteins via direct home delivery and our weekly Free Market. We have been working with these families for almost five years and have not interrupted service through fires, snow, or heat waves. It is important to change the relationship with food insecurities as an entire community. We have resources in abundance, and we must share. It is also important that we serve community members with integrity, dignity, and care. We never serve folks with expired items or things we personally would not be honored to receive.
24% of our community faces food insecurities, which has a larger ripple effect on education, domestic violence/safety, employment, and more. By addressing food injustices with ongoing comprehensive food support, families are able to pivot out of a space of scarcity and hardship and able to move towards a space of thriving and wellness. We distributed over 1,708,100 pounds of fresh, high-quality food this year! The food we buy is from local BIPOC Farmers. We believe our community deserves the best high quality food available as well as consistency.
EGCs CSA Programming: Weekly Delivery- where EGC delivers produce, pantry items, and proteins to BIPOC households across the metro area. We deliver to 220 BIPOC Families throughout the Portland metro area weekly. Weekly Free Market PopUp- every Thursday, we host a free pantry for BIPOC community members. We have beautiful fresh produce, pantry items, proteins, plants, and other small gifts for folks. Our goal with our weekly popup is to turn it into a free store that is open to BIPOC community members five days a week and will also include things like laundry soap, diapers, toilet paper and all of those household essentials in between. This weekly free market regularly hosts food demos and other CBO’s tabling/distributing resources. We serve 180 Families each week at Market, 400 families in total each week.
In addition to our food program, we have a robust Community Wellness Program. In 2024, EGC hosted 108 community-focused events in person and virtually. Some of those events include our annual Earth Day, Mother's Day, and Juneteenth Celebrations, our annual Back to School event, and our end-of-the-year Holiday Extravaganza.
This year, we launched a twice-monthly Walking Group and a Blood Pressure Group to help promote movement and health awareness in our community.
Our Black History Month Care Packages for Black Elders provided 150 Elders with thoughtful gifts. This is one of our favorite traditions, and it is very well received.
This year, we launched two new pilot programs: our Elder Garden Program and our Healthy Families Healthy Birth Program, which supports birthing families through preschool and provides resources for early childhood development. We also recorded the second season of our podcast, The Sharing Culture.
Our Community Wellness work and food access work has helped distribute critical resources to over 1000 households in the Portland Metro Area this past year. Resources like diapers, laundry soap, dish soap, backpacks, socks + shoes, coats, and self care items.
Throughout our programming we have distributed over 2000 books to our community to help promote literacy. Supporting literacy is important legacy work as our community was once forbidden access to read, or education. Through our Plant Jam Programming we distributed over 1290 fresh bouquets of flowers + over 2580 houseplants and dozens of Christmas trees. Having access to plants and flowers is really good for folks' mental health and we are actively expanding how we talk about access to nature.
In addition to our robust programming we have connected the families we serve with tons of additional resources and opportunities for local sporting games, concert tickets, theatre tickets, vaccine clinics, bus tickets, utility relief services, and life vests.
We have 50 active volunteers, who clocked over 5,000 hours supporting our programming in 2024. These volunteers help with delivery, repackaging food, our weekly Market, our events, and more. Our volunteers really help keep this work going.
We raised over $960,770 dollars. We secured our biggest grant to date, a multi year grant with PCEF worth $1,039,245, distributed over three years. We have 567 monthly supporters who help fund this work. We have pulled in over $200K in in-kind donations (physical items) this past year.
We have worked with over 50 local small businesses this year and partnered/collabed with over 25 other local community based orgs. Investing and working with our community is an important part of our work.
Our favorite feedback for 2024: “I left the Market feeling so cared for and seen.”
Below is a drawing of Market by Christopher Spivery.
What or who inspires us
Our team and work is inspired by both giants in known Black History and giants in our community. Folks who helped raise us, Aunties + Uncles, Siblings, Community Members, Educators, Coaches, and Artists, and so many more titles. We grew up in this community and are inspired by our lived experience witnessing so many different ways folks poured into our community and paved the way for us. Our work is inspired by General Harriet Tubman, Georgia Gilmore, Dr. Booker T. Whatley, The Black Panthers, Audre Lorde, James Baldwin, Eartha Kitt, and many many other known rail blazers in history. We hold our work as legacy work, an offering in our modern time to continue the lessons and contributions of so many incredible people who have paved the way for us to be in this movement.
BHM Plant Jam Table.
Hurdles we have had to overcome
We have had so many hurdles over the past five years from funding difficulties, to disagreements and bad treatment from landlords, to blatant racism, and on and on. For the most part we take these lumps and keep it moving. We are very committed to the work, to feeding community member and getting practical resources into the community.
A big hurdle has been space. We have moved three times in five years and we are fixing to move again this spring. The lack of third spaces in the Black community is getting more and more rare, the amount of spaces Black community members and organizations own is even rarer. The lack of ownership puts valuable programs and cherished spaces at risk and we hope in purchasing a building we can have stability and also contribute to the conversation of cultivating and advocating third spaces or cornerstones within the Black community.
Racism, it goes without saying. We are unapologetically Black, serving the Black community. Folks get big mad about this. We really try to not dwell and just keep looking for pathways forward. It definitely can weigh on the spirit and is a constant reminder we need more folks to speak up against racist norms, values, and barriers.
Funding, whew. Raising money is hard just because and we have some added layers like not gleaning food, and being anti colonial norms, having year round service which still confuses many funders, and being unapologetically Black create all kinds of new layers. We keep trying though through the bumps and hurdles and rejections and have been able to sustain our work for five years so we are on to something. We always try to stay optimistic and we take turns being the champion of optimism.
Current Programming
We have a robust menu of programming, and it all interconnects and nestles beautifully together. We try to be mindful of the other community programming and supports available so we aren’t duplicating this, and our work can be complementary to work happening in our larger community.
CSA: Community Supported Agriculture
Home Delivery : happens weekly Tuesday-Friday, we deliver to 225 households a week
Weekly Market : happens every Thursday, we see upwards of 180 households a week
Health Screenings with OHSU: happens twice a month
Food Demos : as often as we can book a check or nutritionist to come support Market
Other orgs/programs that have relevant programming tabling at Market: almost weekly at Market
Walking Group : Happens 2nd + 4th Saturday at 11am at Wilshire Park
Blood Pressure Group: Happens once a Month
Community Wellness
Community Event Series: Earth Day, Mothers Day, Juneteenth, Back to School, Holiday Extravaganza : these are large scale community celebrations where we also distribute practical resources and educational materials.
Black Elder Care Packages : Happens every February
Healthy Families, Healthy Birth
Prenatal and Beyond Services: 31 families currently with weekly food boxes, diaper/wipe support, and Blooming Boxes as they welcome their new additions.
Ujima Baby Boutique: resource event for our cohort, happens every other month
Cohort outings
Educational resources + connections
Plant Jam : we collect and pass out plants
Black Elder Garden Project : We are working with three Elder Gardens this year in their historic gardens ranging from 23-70 years.
Podcast: Sharing Culture : This is a podcast about sharing, we are on season 2 of this project and it's an opportunity to learn more about EGC and from EGC as well as other organizers.
Housing: ON HOLD, we are looking for funds
Rent + Mortgage Relief Grants
Free Housing Pilot
How we were funded and why this matter
It takes $55K a month to feed 400 households a week. Our annual budget is $1.2 mil a year. We have one fundraiser who does other tasks. We absolutely need more funding support.
Small Donors : We have 589 monthly recurring donors, we are trying to quadruple the amount of recurring monthly donors. Our average monthly donation is $40. Please sign up as a monthly donor if you aren’t already. If you are a monthly donor rally a few folks from your personal community to match you.
Foundation Grants : The foundation community is fickled. We get about 30% of our funding from foundations, and it has been a tricky path to navigate.
Government contracts : working with the City of Portland, Metro, or the county. We do not have federal funding. These opportunities will be drying up. Currently we are trying to push back on the Portland Children's Levy for not funding us.
Corporate Sponsors : These types of opportunities are typically smaller and really just looks like local businesses supporting our work in small increments.
Random Wealthy folks: we have yet to find this community and vice versa. If you know someone, make an introduction.
Why how we are funded matters : one f we don’t have financial support we can’t sustain our work. Additionally we have to talk about money, what we are investing in as a community, and what things costs. We must stop being funny about money.
Mutual Aid: what is it, and how does it relate to EGC
Mutual Aid is a community-based approach where people share resources and services to support each other. Mutual Aid is centered around collective action, responsibility, and tangible support in absence of formal systems.
EGC loudly leans into mutual aid principles, giving from a no strings attached center, leaning into community support to rally resources and funds, while also investing in the community at the same time. Mutual AId shows up in Black History in many ways from Georgia Gilmore making plates to help fund the Civil Rights Movement, The Black Panther Party leveraging community support and relationships to help fund their food program and health clinics. Or through the many giving circles throughout history.
Each Mutual Aid group will create the container that makes the most sense for the community they serve and their group of organizers. EGCs container looks like we raise funds from our larger community and make purchases within our Black + Brown community to serve our Black Community.
Note from CSA Director Tamar Green
Hey Y’all,
For those who don't know me, my name is Tamar Green from the CSA department. While there is a lot of craziness going on federally and locally affecting the families that we serve. I hope that when our families come to a market or event that EGC puts on they find a place of peace, love, hope, and happiness. I want them to remember that no matter who they are or where they are from, once you enter EGC space you are and will always be family. So repeat after me: You are strong, you are loved, you are welcome!
Love,
Tamar Green
CSA Director
Note from Co-founder + Community Wellness Director Lillian Green
Hello, Everyone,
This is Lillian from EGC’s community wellness department! 2025 has started off on a high note as we work to center community joy and support. We see the ongoing attacks on the communities that we live in and support. In light of everything going on, I remember the quote my mom placed around my childhood bedroom walls, “ If you don’t stand for something, you will fall for anything.” As we work to create events and activities that honor and celebrate Black, Indigenous, and People of Color communities, I know we are standing on the right side of history.
We are delivering 150 Black elder care packages this week, enjoying new EGC Healthy Families, Healthy Births programming, and preparing for our 2025 large event series. We know we are stronger together, and together, we will thrive.
I hope you have a fantastic day, and I look forward to seeing you soon at one of our community events!
Walking in Power,
Lillian M. Green
Co-Founder and Community Wellness Director
Note from Co-Founder + Executive Director AJ McCreary
Hiiiiiii,
As we hit this five year anniversary I am full of gratitude. I am grateful for the many many people that heard this idea of a community focused local food loop and leaned in and helped bring it to life. I am grateful for our team that has rocked through all kinds of bumps and has stretched in ways to show up for the community. I am grateful to all the folks who have donated time, dollars and items, never expired to help support our collective community with resources. Thank you all of you for showing up and rocking with us and cheers to the next five years.
In joy,
AJ McCreary
Co-Founder and Executive Director
Where we are going : We are going to keep on keeping!
We want to continue to support the community that raised us, we want to continue to uplift our community and make sure kids are fed, and our children and Elders are cared for. We want to keep inspiring others to expand their imagination and understanding of community care. In addition to continuing our robust programming we want to deepen our work in the following ways:
Buying a building and creating a NE Portland food hub : we are eyeing Alder Commons now that they announced closing as well as a handful of OTHER sites in the NE area. We want to purchase a place, put it in a land trust and ongoing host a community space.
Black Cornerstone Network Project : We are working on a project with Afro Village about Black third spaces and ongoing communication about community work.
Serving more community members, hyper-focused on getting folks tangible resources : we want to expand our food access reach to supporting up to 1000 households a week.
How you can help
Donate money : send money, as a one time or monthly donor. All amounts help. If you are already a donor rally 3-5 people to match you.
Volunteer : sign up as a volunteer to help us move this work
Help with item drives : watch our IG. We regularly have item drives.
The last installment of this mini series will go out in the next few weeks and will lean heavily into where we go from here. How do we move forward? More on how you can build with us. In the meantime, check out our podcast The Sharing Culture, it is a great way to get to know our work and team a bit more intimately. Season two has been very fun to create and we are excited to share these conversations with all of you!
Lean in.
With Care,
The EGC Squad
