Homies Empowerment and FREEdom Store - Approved
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Currently, in addition to developing the Homies Freedom High School, Homies is operating our Community Care Center, Learning Center, and several food access programs out of our FREEdom Store: Tuesday food distribution, Love Packages, and Loaves and Fishes.
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Alejandra Plata Zuniga
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07-29-2020
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05-13-2025
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05-01-2026
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How To Contact
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General Contact
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7641 MacArthur Blvd
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Oakland
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CA
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More Information
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05-24-2022
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05-24-2026
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free
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0.00
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Homies Empowerment Oakland
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94605
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Helpful Links
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Detailed Information
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Homies Empowerment is an independent, youth and community development organization born in Oakland, CA. We operated as an after-school program, with weekly homies unity dinners for close to 6 years... now, in year 11 of our operations, we are incubating our dream of becoming a school, called HECHOS, Homies Empowerment Community High School for Oakland's Success!
Come shop at the FREEdom ?Store! Every Tuesday, Homies Empowerment creates a large storefront called the FREEdom Store, open from 10 a.m. to 3:00 p.m. We welcome everyone! It takes a barrio and it takes a community to come together to offer what we have here at the FREEdom Store. Volunteers and personnel at the FREEdom Store believe in standing in solidarity with their community, and encouraging community self-sufficiency by provide free food and other necessities.
Location: 7641 MacArthur Blvd. Oakland CA, 94605
Freedom Farm: Please take a look at this feature article from the San Francisco Chronicle about our efforts to open up freedom farm. For more information and to get involved please reach out to us at HomiesEmpowerment@gmail.com
Location: 10451 MacArthur Blvd, Oakland, CA 94605
Homies Empowerment's Care Center houses a dynamic team of folks. At the Care Center our team is dedicated to supporting the community with resources, youth engagement, support and encouragement!
The Care Team is composed of an amazing team of Care Managers. This name comes from our work rooted in assessing, planning, implementing, and evaluating actions required to meet folks health and human services needed. We believe people deserve care and are not just cases as such our staff that serve the community are called Care Managers.
Homies Helping Homies hosts a community closet event every Thursday from 11:00 am to 3:30pm. Community is welcome to visit the Care Center during this time to conduct a general intake with the Care Team or to shop for FREE clothing & other household items.
To donate clothes please email or call/text our team, drop offs for gently used and clean or new clothing and household items are highly encouraged! Drop offs can be made on Fridays from 9:00am-4:00pm.
Location: 7645 MacArthur Blvd. Oakland CA, 94605
The LIL Homies Program is dedicated to working with some of our young relatives. We focus on systems-impacted youth who due to difficult life circumstances find themselves working to get out of various systems. Our team seeks to build healthy trusting relationships with young people. In the process, we hope to nurture spaces of mutual learning. As we get to know the youth, we want to identify and highlight their assets and celebrate their successes. At the same time, we want to connect them with any resources they may need (from legal to educational and everything in between) and support them as they develop their long-term network, and their agency, stability, and leadership.
Our Process:
1. Referral/Inquiry Email sent to lil.homies.empowerment@gmail.com
-Please send any referral or initial inquiry to the email above only. Please only include basic information about the young person and why they are being referred.
2. Follow Up Call
-One of our LIL Homies Caretakers will call you back within 1-2 business days for further discussion.
3. Acceptance Letter
-Once it is determined that we are both the right fit and have the bandwidth to work with the young person, we will email a signed Acceptance Letter to the person making the referral.
4. Intake Form
-Once the Acceptance Letter is received, the person making the referral will be asked to complete a straightforward 1 page "Getting to Know Our Youth" (intake) form.
5. Mutual Understandings
LIL Homies: to better support the youth, we will make court appearances and/or provide updates as needed (of course in addition to working on developing a relationship with the young person and to make the connection to resources our youth may need)
Person/Org Making the Referral: to better support the youth, we need a commitment to keeping the LIL Homies Team updated regarding progress in the young person's case (ex: upcoming hearings, new requirements, more updated timeline, etc.)
Contact us:
Phone: 510.905.6251
email: lil.homies.empowerment@gmail.com
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.
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.
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.
The FREEdom School is a grass-roots community effort seeking to serve 10 students per grade level, in Oakland, CA. The FREEdom School launched in the Fall of 2023 as a full-fledged independent high school and is now enrolling its second cohort for the 2024-2025 school year. For the 2024-2025 school year, The FREEdom School will serve 10 9th graders and 10 10th graders. We are now recruiting 10 students for the the new cohort of 9th graders. Please see the application process and APPLY by May 31, 2024.
ADDRESS: 9006 MacArthur Blvd, Oakland, CA 94605
EMAIL: info@homieshighschooltfs.com
PHONE: 510-772-1125
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Eligibility Information
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- CA
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- Alameda County
- Contra Costa County
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- Castro Valley, CA
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- All Age Groups
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- English
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- Unknown/Declined
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