Roots & Dreams And Mustard Seeds Inc

Our Co-op Business Development program includes 73 participants developing seven different co-op businesses Included is Rose & Cole's Transport, Ecuadorian Cleaning, The Handy Man Co-op. The Artisan's Co-op, King Kone Iceceam Shop, and La Cocineras Latin.as and is expanding to include the sectors of child care and interpretation. Developing cooperative groups attend weekly one on one group meetings with their cooperative developer as well as bi-monthly classes, supporting them through the developmental stages of assess, implementation, governance, sustainability and growth. Aside from technical assistance, co-grant writing with teams has become a huge part of our program as lack of start-up capital is one of the greatest impedance to very low income groups developing cooperative businesses. As for our cooperative housing project, we are still researching down payment options to establish 12-24 units of limited equity co-op housing, with units providing a diminishing lease that acts as an equity builder for families living in multifamily residences, as an affordable housing option, as displacement continues to be a major issue in our city.

Our community Programming includes Mercado De Vida, a free market for vulnerable families operating five days per week serving close to 600 low income families weekly and approximately 1800 people when including all household members. It partners with our urban garden, Madre Jardin, which teaches youth and adults to grow food together, in which families are encouraged to take produce home. Our community owned building project hosts our community center which includes our Mercado De Vida market but also offers navigation services to resource vulnerable people and families, youth and adult dance and art classes, our co-op business classes, a weekly wellness clinic, and member led educational workshops. During the summer, we run a bi-lingual youth camp, Corazonidos Community School, serving approximately 90 youths from pre-school to teen years, offering a Montessori-like whole child model that has tables set up for art, building, language, science, math, musical instruments as well as physical education games.

Community Owned Real-estate - We've had a long standing goal of modeling community owned real-estate here in Pittsfield, MA, where community members are empowered to share in the creating and designing of its resources and programming. Donated to us right in downtown, and sitting in the nexus of Pittsfield's two most impoverished neighborhoods, the building serves low income and vulnerable groups in a variety of ways, including being retrofit to support vulnerable groups creating cooperative businesses. 117 Fenn St. holds a small inlet commercial kitchen, now being readied to be rehabbed for Spring activation once the grant contract is complete, which will support six BIPOC chefs, including the producer cooperative, La Cocineras Latinas. 119 Fenn St. holds the Marcado De Vida free grocery and clothing market, located within the general community center. At 129 Fenn St. we are recommissioning the former bar space into a larger shared commercial kitchen, supporting 18 displaced chefs and 2 urban farmers. Finally, thanks to the Massachusetts Transformational Development Initiative, the acquisition grant of 131 and 133 Fenn St., the building connected to ours, has been added to the community owned block and 131 Fenn St. will become a People's Art Gallery, supporting over 23 local artists while 133 Fenn St. the King Kone ice cream shop, will continue working with 11 members to successfully convert it to worker owned. Community Preservation Funds, distributed in this next fiscal year, will be used to rehabilitate many parts of the building, foundation, roof, plumbing and electric alongside Massachusetts transformational development funds to activate the people's art gallery and this section will be used to report rehabilitation grant money as it is dispersed in the next fiscal year. We are very excited to see how the building will further serve and empower vulnerable community members and families in Pittsfield, MA. As of this fiscal year, normal expenses, grants and revenue for it's general running are being placed in this section.