COMMUNITY INITIATIVES

Community & School-Based Whole-Person Healing Clinics

Freedom Community Clinic partners with organizations, institutions, and schools to provide community-based healing and school-based healing on a pop-up basis.

Our goal is to affirm the healing and well-being of systemically disinvested communities in the midst of unaddressed and ongoing trauma and violence.

Services range from half-day healing clinics to weekly education workshops for holistic healing that provide community members, students, and staff with tools, techniques, and direct healing services.

Community partners with ongoing, regular pop-up healing programs & services:

  • Oakland Unified School District for Rusdale and Madison Park Academy, including Spanish-speaking newcomer youth and students/staff who experience gun violence

  • West Coast Children’s Clinic for current and former foster youth

  • UC Berkeley Basic Needs Center for first-generation, low-income students

  • San Francisco LGBTQ+ Center for queer Black, Indigenous, People of Color

  • Peralta Community Colleges for community college students

  • Roots Community Health for Black communities of Oakland (Healing for Black Lives series + Healing Arts Workshop Series)

We also partner with 40+ local organizations to do one-time healing clinics, workshops, and events for community members and staff. Current and past partners include:

  • Black Cultural Zone

  • The Unity Council

  • Restaurant Workers of the Bay (ROC the Bay)

  • Mujeres Unidas y Activas

  • East Oakland Collective

  • Urban Peace Movement

  • Mandela Foods, CASA San Francisco, and more.

Healing to the People Pop-up Street Healing Clinics

"Healing to the People" is an initiative of ongoing pop-up healing clinics in neighborhood parks and community spaces of systemically disinvested areas of Oakland and the Bay Area to uplift, affirm, and prioritize the health, healing, and well-being of Black, Brown, Native, immigrant, and limited income communities.

Our full-day pop-up healing clinics are held in collaboration with local community leaders and organizations in:

  • West Oakland (DeFremery Lil Bobby Hutton Park)

  • East Oakland (San Antonio Park)

  • Deep East Oakland (Arroyo Viejo Park)

  • North Oakland (Pepsi Park).

Participants can receive free first-come, first-served healing services from our vast network of local community healing practitioners.

We also partner with grassroots initiatives serving Black, Indigenous, Brown, and undocumented communities. Community Partnerships have included:

  • East Oakland Collective

  • Black Cultural Zone

  • Banteay Srei

  • People’s Programs

  • Carnaval SF

  • Roots Community Health Center

  • Dream Youth Clinic

  • Mujeres Unidas y Activas

  • The Unity Council, ROC the Bay

  • Bay Area Women Against Rape (BAWAR)

When We Are Free: Artist Residency for QTBIPOC Artists

When We Are Free: Artist Residency is a space prioritizing the healing, dreaming and imagining of Black and Brown artists while considering how this collective and individual healing with nature impacts the art that is conjured up. When there is space and needs are met, where can we go with our minds and how does futurist imaging become reality?

Over the span of three months, artists will gather to build on pre-existing concepts or fresh ideas while also exploring a healing modality that the collective group is interested in investigating on a deeper level.

Residents will have 1-2 weeks at the Ahimsa Healing Retreat Center in Santa Cruz, CA to deepen their connection with the land and to begin constructing their final piece. For the closing of the residency, the cohort will showcase their work in an exhibition hosted at the Freedom Community Clinic Healing Sanctuary in Oakland, CA. Although it is not required, we encourage collaboration throughout the residency.

HEALING APPRENTICESHIP PROGRAMS

Freedom School for Healing & Justice

The intention of the Freedom School for Healing & Justice is to cultivate the next generation of Black, Brown, and immigrant community healers in Oakland, CA. We believe that healing is an *embodied* practice that stems from the wisdom of community & lived experience.

  • Participants will be taught through an applied community apprenticeship model guided by FCC's Whole-Person Healing framework. Trainees will be formally trained in basic herbalism, Reiki I & II, health education basics, and mental health first aid training.

    Group dialogues and reflection assignments will also draw upon somatics, self-reflection, Black feminism, critical race theory, ethnic studies, cultural anthropology, political science, sociology, and more to integrate healing with historical & contemporary social justice frameworks.

  • This is an 8-week course that meets weekly from June-July 2023.

    In-person classes are mandatory and in-person at the FCC Ancestral Healing Sanctuary at 3134 International Blvd. Oakland, CA 94601.

    There will be a short list of required pre-readings, reflection assignments, and a final project to encourage self-reflection, growth, and personal healing.

    Trainees who successfully complete the 8-week series will be invited to complete 15 community service hours (3-5 healing clinics) through Freedom Community Clinic to obtain their Reiki I & II certification, mental health first aid, and FCC Healer certification.

  • This course is completely free for community members. It is our hope that by learning new healing modalities you are able to give healing back to yourself, your families, your loved ones, and your communities.

    • Saturday, June 10 (10a-3p, in-person)
      Opening Ceremony, Somatic Herbalism, FCC Healers Gathering, Ethics, Consent, New Healer Orientation/Training

    • Saturday, June 17 (10a-1p, in-person)
      Spirit & Social Justice Part 1, Reiki I training

    • Saturday, June 24 (1p-4pm, in-person)
      Freedom Community Clinic Healing Clinic at San Antonio Park

    • BREAK (virtual, asynchronous)
      Health Education Basics Part 1, Mental Health First Aid Training

    • Saturday, July 8 (1p-4p, in-person)
      Spirit & Social Justice Part 2, Reiki II training

    • BREAK (virtual, asynchronous)
      Spirit & Social Justice Part 3, Health Education Basics Part 2

    • Saturday, July 22 (1p-4p, in-person)
      Final Presentations, Dinner, Closing Ceremony

  • Requirements for Reiki Certification and FCC Healer Certificate:

    • Attend all 5 in-person gatherings

    • Completion of all health education basics + mental health first aid training

    • Turn in all weekly reflection assignments

    • Have at least two 1-on-1 meetings with Bernie

    • Commit 15 community service hours to serving as a healer at 5 FCC community healing clinics with participant feedback forms

    • Final feedback form

Promotores de Sanación

Launched in May 2023 with its first successful pilot cohort, Promotores de Sanación has trained over 30 local women in holistic healing practices and community health outreach. All participants identify as women, mothers, first-generation immigrants, are Spanish-speaking and/or Mam-speaking, and are over 50 years old.

Promotores de Sanación is a critical training program in cultivating the wisdom of our community-- creating space for dialogue, and forging the next generation of Black, Brown, and immigrant healers.

We aim to disrupt cycles of oppression in order to create new cycles of intergenerational healing, investing in community members to gain skills, funding, and support to lead their own local health, healing, and wellness initiatives. In this way, we subvert cycles of trauma and violence with new standards of community healing justice.

  • Participants engage in a 6-month apprenticeship program with an intensive summer 8-week curriculum that introduces them to community health outreach, healing justice, intergenerational healing, and embodied holistic healing practices (e.g. meditation, yoga, breathwork, herbal medicine, acupressure, and self-massage).

    Trainees who successfully complete the 8-week series will be invited to complete 15 community service hours (3-5 healing clinics) through Freedom Community Clinic to obtain their health education certification, mental health first aid, and FCC Healer certification.

    At the end of the program, participants create their own community healing offerings for the Fruitvale East Oakland community.

    The success of this pilot program has been astounding, as we have been already able to forge 10+ local partnerships with street vendors, local businesses, markets, tiendas, and more to provide regular healing opportunities to their staff, service people, and communities.

OUR CALENDAR

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FCC has impacted 5,500+ people, with 90% of the people served identifying as a Person of Color and 80% of services received by Black and/or Latinx communities.

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HEALING IS FREEDOM IS

HEALING IS FREEDOM IS

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