CAPECA Teams

From left to right: Fatima Malik-Wilson and other Growers’ Alliance co-director—Yemanya Napue and Janea Hackett-Little—fight for food equity and sovereignty in Del Paso Heights and other areas of North Sacramento.

The Del Paso Heights Growers’ Alliance (DPHGA) sought to improve the social determinants of health in our community by cultivating joy, food, and inspiration.  We acknowledge our region’s history and cultural roots of the Miwok and Nisenan peoples. North Sacramento is composed of several interconnected neighborhoods where we operate and maintain vibrant, thriving ecosystems, relationships, urban eco-farms and community gardens. Through CAPECA we intend to research and develop the North Sacramento Urban Agriculture Program in partnership with UC Davis ASI and with generous support from the City of Sacramento Measure U Participatory Budgeting Project Implementation Grant. 

This project aimed to create and sustain a healthier local food system and also support safety in the underserved communities of North Sacramento. The establishment of a weekly CSA-style free fresh, local, seasonal food bags will provide job skills training, placement for residents (including promotoras) and youth, with the intention of addressing underlying health inequities that contribute to violence. Our urban agriculture program will provide an opportunity to bolster economic development and provide income to those living in the neighborhood. Benefits included opportunities for youth and residents to gardening, urban agriculture, and healthy food, nutrition, and activity programs. Our efforts involved supporting residents in creating their own gardens, beautifying the neighborhood and adding natural resources such as a fruit orchard and pollinator habitats. 

At the conclusion of the CAPECA pilot, our research team developed the following issues to investigate:

Goal: To advocate for the City of Sacramento to implement a policy and environmental change Investment by creating at least 2 city owned and operated community gardens (one in 95815 and one in 95838 zip code), dedicated food system funding, and educational resources for the population residing in city council district 2.

Tentative Research Questions:

• WHAT IMPACT DOES RECEIVING A FOOD BOX MAKE ON INDIVIDUAL AND FAMILY FOOD CONSUMPTION, WELL-BEING, AND EXPENDITURES?

• WHAT KINDS OF GARDENING INTEREST, EXPERIENCE, AND EXPERTISE DO FOOD BOX PARTICIPANTS HAVE?

A participant survey, focus group, interviews, and survey results documenting at a minimum:

• Optional demographic information; 

• To the extent (if any) did participants experience the following:

  • improved health as a result of the Program;  

  • increased access to healthy food as a result of the Program; 

  • increased knowledge of how to make healthy food choices as a result of the Del Paso Heights Growers’ Alliance Urban Agriculture Program (DPHGA UAP, the Program); and

  • increased knowledge of how to grow healthy food as a result of the Program.

Community Team:

• UC Davis Agriculture and Sustainability Institute

• International Rescue Committee, New Roots

• Mutual Housing (tentative)

• Del Paso Heights Library (tentative)

• Robertson Community Center (tentative)

• Strawberry Manors Neighborhood Association

• I AM MANPOWER

• Youth, Interns, and Resident Leaders

• City of Sacramento

• Additional partners are welcomed

From Left to Right: Anna Lisa Vargas, Jayla, Rosa Inguanzo, Suellen Hopfer. October 9th, 2022, CAPECA Kick-off Workshop and Training.

Our team consists of a partnership between UC Irvine Environmental Health Department (part of program in Public Health) and Communities for a New California Education Fund Education (CNC EF). Our efforts will be focused in the communities of the Eastern Coachella Valley and the City of Merced. Community health and needs assessments conducted over the years have identified priorities in affordable housing, environmental justice and jobs/employment.

We are Community Organizers, Researchers and Advocates! Our vision is to create leadership among our communities by community-driven climate advocacy, justice, and resilience. Our goal is to empower an informed community by providing guidance, support, resources/funding,

capacity building in the areas of resilience and sustainability.

The Mycelium Weavers aimed to advance climate justice by cultivating youth voices, intergenerational collaboration, and indigenous environmental traditions.  We acknowledge that the East Bay region is in unceded Ohlone land. Our youth team members are part of the MYN Youth Leadership Council, which partners with Metwest High School (Oakland Unified School District) and Mission High School (San Francisco Unified School District) to provide youth-centered solutions to local concerns. As a CAPECA team, we planned to refine our youth participatory action research projects,  trained other youth in the action-research process, and strengthen school and community partnerships to advance youth-led climate action. 

Mycelium Youth Network

MYN Youth Leadership Council

This CAPECA Team completed their training in December 2023.

Our team built on the Green Together Collaborative’s Transformative Climate Communities (TCC) grant program in the Northeast San Fernando Valley in Los Angeles. Our partnership includes Pacoima Beautiful, a grass-roots environmental justice organization, and researchers at the UCLA Luskin Center for Innovation and the UCLA Latino Policy and Politics Institute. Our efforts focused on designing thoughtful community engagement and capacity-building strategies with the goal of ensuring community ownership of Bradley Plaza and Green Alley. The space was transformed from a crumbling, neglected alley into a vibrant community space for the children and families of Pacoima, a neighborhood in the TCC project area. 

Location: Los Angeles

 https://www.greentogethercollaborative.org/

https://storymaps.arcgis.com/stories/b9f840e083314073904044228d84b46e 

From left to right:  Adam Plummer, Science Teacher, Millennial Tech Middle School; Camille Campion, Field Researcher & Community Coordinator, UCSD Center on Global Justice; Allie Sifrit, Director of Education, Groundwork San Diego-Chollas Creek; Nicola Labas, Principal, Millennial Tech Middle School; Amy Knight, Field Researcher, UCSD Center on Global Justice.

This CAPECA Team completed their training in December 2023.

We are the EarthLab Community Station, a partnership between UC San Diego’s Center on Global Justice, Groundwork San Diego-Chollas Creek, and Millennial Tech Middle School. Working in Southeastern San Diego, a low-income community of color disproportionately affected by climate change, our team educates and empowers young people to be agents of change. We adapted Bending the Curve, a UC system-wide multifaceted educational project, for a middle school audience. With community participation, our goal was to co-create a climate change project-based educational curriculum that is rooted in local practices and action, and promotes STEAM-literacy, social-emotional learning, and environmental empathy.

UCSD Center on Global Justice: http://gjustice.ucsd.edu/earth-lab/

Groundwork SD: https://groundworksandiego.org/earthlab/

Millennial Tech Middle School: https://mtmsteam.org

Los Pericos de Santa Ana (The Parrots of Santa Ana) is composed of young, passionate, and resilient community organizers who are striving towards a more just and equitable community and environment. It is our city’s long and rich history of multi-generational activism (ranging from housing justice, immigrant justice, food sustainability, and environmental/climate justice) that inspire our efforts in centering the needs of our most marginalized and vulnerable community members. We firmly believe that our greatest asset is our people! Based on this belief we plan on utilizing CAPECA’s Participatory Action Research Curriculum to bridge our working-class movement with popular education strategies, cultural innovation, and community-driven advocacy/ research in order to strengthen our community’s solidarity with the fight for climate justice. Se Ve, Se Siente, Santa Ana Está Presente! 

Groups: THRIVE Community Land Trust; CRECE

https://www.thrivesantaana.org/

https://www.ocej.org/

Location: Santa Ana

Chant: Se ve! Se siente! Santa Ana está presente! 

(From left to right: Laura Diaz, Claudia Muralles, Gisell Perez and Daniel Soto)

Location: Santa Rosa

Our team of academic researchers and community partners worked to build collaborative programming utilizing community-based and youth-participatory research.

These partnerships provided a powerful pathway from research hubs to communities with the goal of dismantling polluting industries by way of empowered data-driven community action.

Our primary partnership was with the North Bay Organizing Project and Latinx Student Congress where we center community concerns and find collaborative actions to address them. We aim to support community action that advocates for a more just environment.

Team member organizations Regeneración and UC Santa Cruz Sustainability Office and its students worked closely to facilitate community dialogue and understanding around climate change with the Monterey County Transformative Climate Communities planning process funded by the Strategic Growth Council. 

CAPECA helped us build the needed skillset and expertise to drive community-based climate action through facilitation and community-driven organizing, catalyzing community-led climate collaboration, across the Pajaro Valley.  It also influenced the work we are engaging in at the Federal level through the Justice40 Accelerator cohort. 

The Central Valley region today known as Yolo County has been stewarded by the Patwin People for millennia. The Yolo CAPECA Team consisted of community organizers, research academics, and local government personnel specializing in energy, fire, housing justice, food systems, and land conservation. We care about engaging communities and centering underrepresented populations in sustainability efforts. With this goal, we analyzed the climate action planning processes of Yolo County and other local municipalities through the lens of diversity, equity, and inclusion to identify gaps and opportunities to better reflect the lived experiences and impacts felt by disadvantaged communities in future policy recommendations and climate goals.