IMPACT Social Entrepreneurship Awards
2013 Awarded Teams

The Center for Art and Public Life is pleased to announce the recipients of the 2013 IMPACT Social Entrepreneurship Awards; Alemany Outdoor Community Kitchen, Stand Up: Courage is Contagious, and Team Escalar: Embracing Local Solutions. These three teams were selected from a highly competitive field of submissions to be awarded up to $10,000 to enact these highly ambitious project proposals. The three recipient teams and their project abstracts are below.

Alemany Outdoor Community Kitchen
Alemany Farms, San Francisco
Alex DeCicco (BArch), Hugh Vanho (BArch), Eric Rogers (BArch), Alan Hayes (BArch), May Ching (Graphic Design), Sara Schneider (BArch)

After discovering the large organization of volunteers at Alemany Farm, we are excited to use our resources to create more for its success! This project started in Rebecca Katkin's U.Turf Advanced Interdisciplinary Studio. It is both didactic and vital to Urban Farming at levels that can sustain the surrounding San Francisco community for lifetimes.

We say lifetimes, because learning to be self sustaining has to be deeply rooted through experience and education beginning in the early years of life. At at the farm, children come on weekend trips through various groups to learn about caring for the land, the animals it supports, and the mouths that it feeds. Weeding, seeding, and watering are critical things to understand, and can be easily learned while doing. Being able to do all this along with your elders is an important bonding mechanism that helps teach real values to our children and having a space to both lecture and demonstrate these concepts will help not only the youth, but those who have never worked in a garden or farm that live nearby and might not have space to garden.

Located directly next to a low income housing initiative, Alemany Farms provides those who are less fortunate than others with fresh organic produce to feed themselves and their families. The kitchen can help individuals have an opportune moment to create different connections with people and network with the greater community perhaps leading to life change. The more people who use the farm, the more food will be needed, and this requires volunteers. Farming on land that does not use power tools can be intimidating at first, but with a sit down session, one can be properly educated on how to use everything from a hoe to a machete, but what do you do with food you cannot find in a store? If raw cooking was something that you just could not quite get right, come to the chef day and learn how to make fresh kale citrus salad.

Providing this outdoor kitchen atmosphere within the natural state of Alemany Farms helps highlight a life and value giving opportunity and helps remove the context of the city and the things we take for granted to give focus on sustainable practices that will be learned and passed down and last for lifetimes. The Farms attracts many types of people from day to day and hosts events for a celebratory harvest, workshops / classes, or just on a beautiful day. Musicians, children, people from other organizations, and new farmers come together on the farm.

The project is a great way for us (CCA students) to do collaborative work from our different backgrounds for a local community which we have found to love. We know that this type of kitchen project has been an idea of theirs for a couple years now, but they have not found the funding. It is a great scale for a design-build project that is both functional and it something that the farm really needs. It will be a great way for us to experience managing and working with a client that has a specific need and legacy to continue. They have a waterline on site that we can use for the kitchen sinks that fill feed back into the pond (the farm's water storage). Our team has already been active on the farm as volunteers. One member has ten years experience with bath and kitchen design and four of us have lots of experience with design build projects from school and as free lancers We are all excited to make this our summer project!

STAND UP: Courage is Contagious
Caribbean Vulnerable Communities Coalition, Kingston, Jamaica
Kristina Kotlier (March), Raine Paulson-Andrews (March), Frances Reid (March)
Roberto Gomez Hernandez (MFA/MA Visual Critical Studies)

STAND UP: Courage is Contagious is a social media campaign to create an active community for LGBTQ rights in the most homophobic country in the western hemisphere. More individuals have been hated to death in Jamaica than in nearly any other country in the world. It will be the first international campaign to create an active network between LGBTQ Jamaicans and their allies, in country and in exile. STAND UP: Courage is Contagious will partner with the Caribbean Vulnerable Communities Coalition (CVC) and its underground counterpart, the Jamaica Forum for Lesbians, All-Sexuals & Gays (JFLAG) to counter homophobia with community building, story-telling, and safe visibility. Modeled after the It Gets Better campaign, but formed under the difficult Jamaican social climate, STAND UP: Courage is Contagious exploits the unique characteristics of social media to operate in spite of the socio-political oppression and threat of physical violence. STAND UP: Courage is Contagious will create testimonial / solidarity videos, and a self-sustaining platform ready for exponential growth. STAND UP: Courage is Contagious comes at an exciting time in the history of LGBTQ rights in Jamaica, as individuals and organizations challenge the current political and social discrimination.

Team Escalar: Embracing Local Solutions
Alter Terra and PCI: Project Concern International, Los Laureles Canyon, Tijuana, Mexico
Isaac Buwembo (DMBA), Maria Paula Navia (DMBA), Payal Patel (DMBA),
Mariana Quiroga (DMBA)

In collaboration with Alter Terra and Project Concern International, Team Escalar aims to improve quality of life in low-income, environmentally threatened neighborhoods in Los Laureles canyon of the Tijuana River watershed, into safe, healthy, productive and empowered communities. The goal is to provide Alter Terra with a growth strategy that includes a communication strategy and recommendations to develop a sustainable business model that will increase the adoption of permeable pavers. Furthermore, this local erosion control and urban development model is key to disaster prevention efforts in high-risk flood zones like Guatemala, where PCI is currently working on an important urban renewal pilot project in the slums of Guatemala City and other rapidly urbanizing
Latin America, Asia and Africa.

Past Team Projects

Learn about the 2012 finalist teams »

Read more about the IMPACT team projects.