Dec 20, 20224 min read

A Year of Impact and Investment

Dancing, playing, wrestling, painting, farming, cooking, and investing!

These are just a few of the words that describe our activities in 2022 as we worked together with the Sheriff’s Office to improve the health and wellbeing of the community through Community Capitals Policing.

We are deeply grateful to our staff, volunteers, partners, funders, Sheriffs’ Deputies, and everyone who supported us and cheered us on in 2022. We couldn’t do it without you!

This includes some highlights of our work in 2022.

Grand opening of the 90-acre expansion of Dig Deep Farms at Ardenwood Historic Farm

The Dig Deep Farms expansion will allow us to support our community in numerous ways including:

- Grow more fresh produce for the County’s Recipe4Health, food-as-medicine program,

- Create dozens of quality jobs and training opportunities for local residents as well as justice-involved individuals,

- Practice and teach permaculture farming techniques that improve the health of residents,

- Improve the quality of our soil, and

- Fend off climate change.

Group of participants standing in front of Neideffer Fields, a new 4X4 soccer park behind the REACH Ashland Youth Center

Launch of Neideffer Fields, a new 4X4 soccer park behind the REACH Ashland Youth Center

During the pandemic, the area behind REACH was taken over at night by people drinking and tagging walls with graffiti. Instead of making arrests, Sheriff’s Deputy (now Sergeant) Daniel Murphy reached out to county officials and the San Lorenzo Unified School District to increase the safety of the space, which led to the creation of a new, free-to-play, 4X4 soccer park for DSAL’s recreational soccer program.

Expansion of the Dig Deep Farms Food Hub ecosystem

The Dig Deep Farms Food Hub has become an instrumental piece of infrastructure that:

- Supports the County’s food recovery effort,

- Serves as the distribution hub for Recipe4Health food-as-medicine prescriptions, and

- Provides local entrepreneurs with affordable commercial kitchen space to launch or expand their businesses. This support allows them to create jobs and contribute to the ALL IN Eats, local circular food economy. Now, in order to support an even broader impact, we have received funding to build new Food Hubs in East Oakland, Hayward, and Newark, with others planned for Livermore and other parts of Oakland.

A rainbow of colorful produce painted on the We Grow Medicine mural

Unveiling of the “We Grow Medicine” mural at the Dig Deep Farms Food Hub

DSAL and the Sheriff's Office partnered with Blue Shield of California, ALL IN Eats, and Recipe4Health to create a new mural. We Grow Medicine celebrates community health, wellbeing, and the importance of fresh, local, sustainably grown food-as-medicine, that improves public health and safety.

At the unveiling, we previewed the preliminary results from the County’s food-as-medicine initiative that is:

- Reducing food insecurity, isolation, and depression;

- Decreasing reported incidents of physical and mental health illness;

- Increasing weekly exercise; and

- Positively addressing a range of social determinants of health.

- Advancing policy change to enable food to be a covered benefit under MediCal

Construction of Sunset Futsal Park at the Hayward Adult School

DSAL and the Sheriff’s Office are excitedly awaiting the completion of a $2.5 million futsal park at the Hayward Adult School in partnership with the Hayward Unified School District, Hayward Area Recreation and Park District, and the Valley Foundation.

The Sunset Futsal Park is the outcome of a community-driven process to transform unused space into a futsal court to ease the shortage of park and sports fields in the area.

The state-of-the-art facility will provide youth and their families with opportunities to engage in healthy activities and instill a sense of pride and empowerment that comes along with having quality facilities and winning teams.