Financial Action Teams

Grassroots Philanthropy for Self-Help, community-generated, community-controlled, community investment, is TEAMS' strategy to provide increased opportunities for residents of low-income communities to generate and control capital for both personal and community benefit. TEAMS' purpose is to unleash the creative capacity of low income residents to address their own life circumstances as social entrepreneurs.

TEAMS’ approach to community revitalization leads to effective, systemic community change as exemplified by greater self reliance and interdependence on the part of residents. In order to build this independence, TEAMS helps to prepare individuals to be personally and financially ready to be actively involved in planning and managing neighborhood growth and change.

TEAMS is developing a new form of grassroots community investment, with funds being generated and allocated by low-income residents for the benefit of their communities. This investment strategy leverages years spent developing residents’ individual and collective capacity to identify and successfully address the needs of their communities.

As an extension of its SAT model, TEAMS developed a Financial Action Community Team (FACT) in the Monument Corridor for resident leaders to gain in-depth knowledge about how to leverage capital to build individual and community wealth. Members of the FACT created a strategy for income generation by investing their own money in the purchase and rehabilitation of real estate. They are just completing their first rehab project and anticipate the return on investment to be 50 % in four months. Ten percent of the profit from this investment will be used to start the first Community Capital Pool.

Projects generated by TEAMS in collaboration with the Monument Financial Action Community Team include:

• Real Estate Strategy: The Monument Community FACT has purchased its first house as part of a real estate strategy to rehabilitate residential properties for resale.
• Micro-Enterprise Loan Fund: graduates of FACT have developed guidelines and are managing the City of Concord’s Micro-Enterprise Loan Fund to help start up small businesses.
• Youth Entrepreneurs: a newly formed team composed of 10 young women, Monument Youth Entrepreneurs, has received small business training and are writing business plans in order to apply to the Micro-Enterprise Loan Fund to start their own businesses.
• Sabor Latino LLC: a cooperative food services company has been formed, to provide delicious and nutritious home style Latin cooking throughout Central Contra Costa County –catering meetings and delivering meals to workplaces for employees to take home.

SALUD Health Projects

The Latino and Pacific Island communities in the United States are disproportionately affected by the obesity epidemic: poor diet and lack of exercise contribute to extremely high rates of obesity-related illnesses including cardiovascular disease, hypertension, cancer and diabetes.

To address this issue in the communities where we work, TEAMS has developed a unique approach to community health that leads to effective, practical individual and community change. Research shows that peer support is critical in making personal lifestyle changes. Peer activity is also crucial in changing policies and in creating a healthy community. Rather than dictate a particular program or agenda, TEAMS builds residents capacity to solve their own problems as individuals and as a group. With the assistance of our resident leaders in the Monument Corridor, Bayview/Hunters Point and the San Antonio district, we are developing ¡SALUD! SATs to create community solutions to the obesity crisis.

As the Support Action Teams in the Monument Corridor in Concord have developed over the last five years, they have established a base of community residents who understand how to mobilize their peers, agency officials and other members of community institutions. Resources to support a healthy lifestyle already exist in the Monument Corridor; ¡SALUD! SATs build the capacity of the residents to leverage these resources. For example,

• The gym at Church of the Nazarene sits empty five nights a week. The parent leaders of Liga Latina have developed a highly successful youth soccer league. They can use their expertise to start a basketball league at the church.
• With parents working two and three jobs, they are often too tired to cook; yet there are few healthy, culturally appropriate take out food options. Sabor Latino was created by residents to respond to this need, creating a cooperative food business and adapting traditional recipes to make them healthy. ¡SALUD! provides members of Sabor Latino with an opportunity to share their expertise with the wider community while they build their business.

The ¡SALUD! SATs are developing resident leaders able to address issues of healthy eating and exercise in ways that are effective and culturally appropriate, increasing the numbers of residents who are leading a healthier lifestyle, and working collectively to affect policy changes. On an individual and family level, team members support one another as they exercise together, try out new recipes, and set and achieve weight loss goals. ¡SALUD! community activities are designed by the residents; the following are some sample activities:

• A free swim class for young children is being created at the local pool, with the mothers exercising at the same time in the nearby park.
• A senior women’s walking club is being created to and from Mass at the local Catholic Church each Sunday morning.
• A cooking club will be set up as an after-school program for elementary school kids and their mothers.
• A group of parents is planning a taste test party of healthy snacks in the elementary schools to determine the most popular options and work to make sure these are available at the schools, local markets and convenience stores.

Existing SAT projects in the area of healthy eating and exercise have provided a base to start this pilot, and these are being expanded to create additional ¡SALUD! SATs. In Oakland, an aerobics class of Latina mothers at Garfield Elementary School was organized into an SAT to improve nutrition and exercise programs at the school. These mothers are now being trained as ¡SALUD! ! facilitators and are planning their own groups and activities. In Bayview/Hunter’s Point, a health education class at an alternative high school for high risk youth has been developed into a peer education/health promotion pilot focused on preventing diabetes and asthma, including exercise, smoking cessation and healthy diet. Student Leaders for Health has become a popular, well-attended class and after-school program by and for Pacific Islander youth in the Bayview.

Neighborhood Advisory Council

Recognizing that real community change cannot occur without engaging the residents of low-income communities, TEAMS was asked by the Northern California Council for the Community (NCCC) to recruit a group of highly talented grassroots community leaders to consult on their programs. TEAMS recruited a Neighborhood Advisory Council consisting of leaders from low-income communities throughout the Bay Area who embody the geographic, ethnic, age and other diversity of the region; each leader must be accountable to a larger group of residents in their community.

Unlike most resident advisory committees, which are typically structured as “focus groups” to simply identify community concerns, the Neighborhood Advisory Council members are active problem-solvers on behalf of their communities. The NAC provides a forum for the grassroots leaders from these diverse neighborhoods to develop shared goals, access training around those goals, and create a base of mutual support. NAC members also work with the United Way of the Bay Area's 4 Issue Cabinets, grounding their projects in the priority concerns of those who live and work in low-income neighborhoods.

The Neighborhood Advisory Council has adopted TEAMS’ initiative “Grassroots Philanthropy for Self-Help” as their priority work. They have received TEAMS’ financial Action Community Team training and are planning their first collaborative financial project.

Grassroots Philanthropy for Self-Help

Grassroots Philanthropy for Self-Help, community-generated, community-controlled, community investment, is TEAMS’ strategy to provide increased opportunities for residents of low-income communities to generate and control capital and other resources for both personal and community the benefit of their communities. TEAMS’ purpose is to unleash the creative capacity of low income residents to address their own life circumstances as social entrepreneurs.

This innovative strategy leverages years spent building residents’ capacity to successfully address the needs of their communities, and is part of a planned progression of development which results in communities whose members can leverage their connections and skills, as well as their own economic resources.

TEAMS is currently developing Grassroots Philanthropy for Self Help in three Northern California communities (Monument Corridor of Concord, Bayview/Hunter’s Point in San Francisco and Stockton/Lodi in the Central Valley) where TEAMS has developed a strong base among residents. TEAMS invests in residents so that they can develop their innate abilities to leverage resources for themselves and their community, creating sustainable community economic development. This requires a “pre-development” phase, building residents’ capacity to recognize and seize opportunities when they arise, to learn by doing, and to build a sense of future for their community. The residents are supported as they become skilled social entrepreneurs, creating resident- controlled controlled investment vehicles which bring financial resources directly to the community. This makes it possible for residents to implement their own projects to address their self-defined goals. Having learned how to make investments, residents then invest their own money in collective business ventures and re-invest the profits back into the community. This is accomplished through contributing to a Community Capital Investment Fund, operated as a donor-advised fund in a local community foundation.

In the Monument Corridor, the first Financial Action Community Team (FACT) successfully invested in and rehabilitated a house, generating 60% return on investment in seven months and established the first Community Capital Investment Fund. Local business leaders are linking directly to the low-income residents and serving as mentors as they develop the Grassroots Philanthropy for Self Help model.

As Grassroots Philanthropy for Self-Help was being developed, local philanthropists, including the trustees and board members of the East Bay Community Foundation, The San Francisco Foundation’s Koshland Committee and United Way of the Bay Area visited the Support Action Teams and became so convinced of the efficacy of this model that they committed to directly support this work.

TEAMS has already developed training curricula in English and Spanish for the Core SAT model and its financial counterpart, the Financial Action Community Team. Experienced community leaders are being trained as trainers, increasing TEAMS’ capacity to disseminate this revolutionary model.