Congratulations to the grant recipients! Berkeley City Council approved 2-year (FY26 and FY27) grants to 7 community agencies and Berkeley Unified School District (BUSD).
Read Resolution #71,709 N.S. for more details.
Listed below are the agencies that received repeat funding:
The Berkeley Public School Gardening and Cooking Program engages students with hands-on instruction in the garden. As part of the 2020 Vision and the District’s Integrated Wellness Policy, the Program is woven into student life District-wide to ensure the academic, physical, emotional, and health development of all students to affect three main areas of student learning from preschool through high school:
Academic Achievement: By utilizing a place-based, interdisciplinary, and experiential approach to the new academic standards, garden educators work closely with teachers to bring classroom learning to life in the garden.
Increased Health: With support from community partners, we promote health and nutrition with opportunities to taste delicious fruits and veggies found growing in the garden. Teaching students that taking care of the land and your body allows for the development of multiple intelligence integral to whole child education.
Essential Life Skills: Through placed-based learning, students gain valuable communication and collaboration skills, while building confidence as problem-solvers. Students practice cultural competence and language development as they cultivate positive relationships with the world around them and their peers. We provide this collaborative education with a focus on consistency, improved healthy food and drink access, and sustainable replication in 17 schools.
For Thirst - Water First! increases awareness about the health risks of sugar-sweetened beverages and promote water consumption among Berkeley youth ages 14-22 particularly from South and West Berkeley neighborhoods most vulnerable to health problems caused by consumption of sugar-sweetened beverages. Ecology Center will leverage the programs, influence, and knowledge it has to provide resources for Berkeley youth to make healthier choices and to develop better food beverage environments. Healthier choices include eating more fresh fruits and vegetables and increasing water consumption and combating the impact of predatory unhealthy marketing campaigns. The proposed activities outlined in this narrative will address this need, and provide key hands-on opportunities for Berkeley youth to embody these practices through the Youth Environmental Academy. We will help develop healthy food environments through environmental, systems, and policy change primarily through key programming addressing these challenges at Berkeley Unified School District and Downtown. Ecology Center will strategically implement environmental, policy, and systems change to promote the consumption of tap water and healthy foods among Berkeley youth ages 15-24 and their families. We have three key modalities for making impact: 1. intensive work with 30 paid youth interns; 2. leverage this investment in youth leadership to improve the food and beverage choices of all Berkeley Unified students on and off campus; and 3. empower youth to engage in policy change that can affect their community and beyond.
Thirsty for Change! is a community-based health initiative led by Healthy Black Families in partnership with the Center for Food, Faith, and Justice, the Ecology Center, and the Peer Wellness Collective. The program engages African American Berkeley residents through interactive nutrition education focused on reducing sugar-sweetened beverage consumption and supporting healthier lifestyle choices.
Program activities include Shop Smart, Eat Healthy workshops and guided farmers’ market walks. These offerings provide practical skill-building in areas such as reading nutrition labels, budgeting for healthy foods, selecting fresh produce, and preparing simple, nutritious meals. The program also promotes increased water consumption and raises awareness of the health impacts associated with sugary drinks and highly processed foods, including diabetes, oral health issues, and obesity.
Thirsty for Change! uses participant surveys and ongoing evaluation to measure increases in knowledge, shifts in attitudes, and reported behavior change. The program aims to reach at least 300 youth and adults annually through a combination of workshops and farmers’ market activities.
The Multicultural Institute’s (MI) Life Skills/ Day Laborer Program offers comprehensive wrap-around services including job-placement assistance, educational skill development courses along with health and legal support. Through this program it offers the Healthy Activity Program allowing MI to become a crucial provider of health awareness and prevention resources to monolingual Spanish speaking Latino families in Berkeley. Its health activities are delivered in a culturally and language specific manner. Services are offered to individuals where they are at, following MI’s unique service model based on daily street outreach. Because MI has been in the Berkeley community serving Latino families for nearly 35 years, its staff has first-hand knowledge about their health needs and has the capacity to guide individuals in the process of navigating the health system. This program will offer health awareness on conditions related to SSBs, prevention resources, connect families to key services and implement policy and system changes aiming for overall wellness in the Berkeley Latino families MI serves. MI aims to serve a total of 650 individuals each fiscal year of this grant. MI will provide these individuals health support and direct services that bridge the language, immigration and cost gaps that exist as common obstacles to Latino families seeking health care services.
LifeLong Medical Care’s Chronic Disease and Oral Health Prevention Project (CDOHP) will reduce health inequities by reducing the number of patients with hypertension, diabetes and dental caries, using evidence-based practices and technology to expand access to hypertension and oral health screening, and prevention education and treatment for low-income Berkeley residents. In collaboration with Heart2Heart (H2H) and the Dental Caries Project, the CDOHP Project will couple chronic disease prevention education with oral health education activities, increase access to hypertension and dental screening, and improve referrals between medical and dental services. The CDOHP Project’s two-year goal is to reach approximately 2000 low income residents with chronic disease prevention and oral health education; conduct 3,250 hypertension screenings; and, 250 dental treatments. The hypertension screening and oral health education will be offered through 100 community events and staff will conduct targeted outreach in locations like Senior Centers, Barbershops, and supportive housing sites.
The YMCA's Healthy Me! Program targets high need populations including those at higher than average risk for diabetes, obesity, and tooth decay. The YMCA Healthy Me! Program will serve low-income children birth through 5 years of age and their families residing or attending school in Berkeley, predominantly West and South Berkeley. Approximately 45% of the families are African American and 35% of the families are Latinx- groups statistically seen to be at higher risk for type 2 diabetes and heart disease. Many of the families regularly rely on beverages and food from corner stores near their homes. Historically, this population has had less health education provided, and in turn, less knowledge regarding nutrition and healthy beverages has been passed down within the families. Healthy Me! will serve 800 children and families each year, located at the YMCA, BUSD, Centro Vida and UC Berkeley child development centers.
Berkeley Youth Alternatives will implement the Urban Agriculture and Team Nutrition program in FY 2026 and FY 2027 through activities that include the following: a) recruit, hire, and train 4 garden and nutrition intern youth educators to promote healthy alternatives to SSBs and conduct interactive workshops to at least 1000 children and youth; b) engage Youth Educators to re-launch the BYA “no-cost” Community-Supported Agriculture (CSA) Program monthly boxes of fresh fruits and vegetables; and c) engage in a campaign to convert unused land into a community garden. The Youth Educators will encourage youth above the age of 12 to download BYA’s Healthy App to receive notifications about healthy eating, exercise, events, and ideas that can employ to change things in their community.
Berkeley Food Network's (BFN) “Connecting the Community to Wellness" project leverages Sugar-Sweetened Beverage (SSB) tax funding to reduce harmful beverage consumption and promote healthier choices among Berkeley's most vulnerable residents. Recognizing that priority populations, including children, African Americans, Latinx residents, low-income families, and pregnant individuals, are disproportionately targeted by SSB marketing and face greater risks of related health outcomes like type 2 diabetes, heart disease, and obesity, BFN is uniquely positioned to drive meaningful behavioral change.
With over 2,100 households visiting the 9th Street Pantry monthly and 500+ active volunteers, BFN will expand its reach through two SSB-focused efforts. First, all volunteers will receive training on the dangers of SSB consumption, reinforcing BFN's long-standing policy of not accepting or distributing these products. Outreach volunteers will receive advanced education to actively discourage SSB consumption within the community. Second, BFN will increase access to clean water at the 9th Street Pantry as a direct, healthy alternative to SSBs, paired with nutritional education and community communications through social media and quarterly newsletters.
Together, these efforts will promote lasting behavioral change and healthier lifestyles for an estimated 5,000+ Berkeley residents throughout the grant period.
