Betti Ono Foundation

Through the community wellbeing strategy, we are creating autonomous spaces that deepen community connection, foster civic engagement, and extend arts and culture into the fabric of public life. The arts and civic engagement (ace) youth fellows: the ace youth fellows are transitional age young leaders (16-24 years) wh are given a platform to amplify the public issues that they care about. We create opportunities for fellows to develop leadership and community outreach skills. They work with our team to design and execute public awareness campaigns, primarily focused on disrupting the culture of gender based violence and challenging harmful gender norms. In addition to engaging with the subject matter, youth have the opportunity to develop their personal leadership capacity and make concrete connections to local artists, activists, and educators advancing social change efforts in oakland. The artists in residence program: so far we have commissioned five paid residencies featuring eight black and brown artists from oakland, st. Louis, new york, and the caribbean. We have had at least 3,000 public participants and built strategic partnerships with 20 actively engaged community groups. Our most recent artist in residence was safi kolozsvari regalado, a bay area based artist/muralist, who worked with youth fellows to conceptualize and design the artwork for phase ii of the not one more girl initiative, which was inspired by the long tradition of chicano style ballpoint pen art. The posters depict steps people can take if they witness or experience harassment.

Our ending gender-based violence (gbv) strategy is focused on implementing survivor-led cultural change initiatives to disrupt the culture of gbv. Not one more girl (nomg) is a bipoc youth-led initiative in partnership with community based organizations and bay area rapid transit authority (bart) to end gender-based violence. It is the first community driven bay area initiative to address sexual harassment and gender based violence on public transportation that include art, cultural strategy, policy change, and youth leadership. This ongoing initiative was cocreated with local black and latinx artists and youth and seeks to disrupt the norms perpetuating genderbased violence and bystander inaction on public transportation.