Episode 23: En2Action

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Bayview Bistro Staff, Bayview Boxes,Customers and various Bayview Events

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“I think if anything, there's been more light and more sort of like, an awareness, right. Of small businesses, and how people really need to support the small businesses to, continue to contribute to the economy.”

In this episode, our featured voices are Andrea Baker the founder of both Andrea Baker Consulting and the nonprofit En 2 Action along with Pooja Rajani the Director of Programs who leads the organization’s operations and project management.

I first worked with Andrea back in 2015 in the production of our two-part series “Doing Business in the Bayview” which I recommend that you listen to for more context on her team’s efforts in working with the Bayview Hunters Point community economically and culturally to reinvent their community. You can find the two-part series in our archives on george koster dot com, click on voices of the community and on the archives.

Andrea and Pooja have been working tirelessly in the bayview hunters point community of san francsico from our last great recession in 2008 to today’s covid-19 pandemic and economic meltdown. Throughout this time Andrea and Pooja have helped to incubate, cultivate, advise and promote food and beverage entrepreneurs as well as artisans in the Bayview Hunters Point neighborhood.

Their work with small business owners enables them to execute their dreams of controlling their own destiny and provide an economic legacy for their families. The backdrop of today’s interview is covid-19’s impact on the small business restaurants that make up the economic and cultural fabric of our neighborhoods and their struggle to stay alive.

Andrea Baker

Andrea Baker, En2action’s founder and Executive Director has decades of experience with community outreach, corridor activation, and economic development across the Bay Area. Andrea has been a place making pioneer, long before the term was coined in the mid-1990’s, helping individuals and groups to strengthen their relationships with the communities they share. Andrea has provided community development and outreach services to both for profit and nonprofit projects in the Bay Area. Her work is informed by a deep commitment to ensuring that communities have a voice in changes that impact their vision for neighborhoods that they call ‘home’. Her work has involved the coordination of multiple parties, outreach to community residents, merchants, and other stakeholders; as well as the facilitation of group meetings in culturally diverse neighborhoods like East Palo Alto, Bayview-Hunters Point, Fillmore, Oceanview/Merced/Ingleside, Chinatown/North Beach and Mission communities.

Pooja Rajani

Pooja serves as the Director of Programs at En2action where she oversees the implementation, development, and coordination of multiple projects. Her areas of expertise include community outreach, facilitation, stakeholder engagement, communications, and event planning.

Pooja has worked on projects that involved outreach to community residents, merchants, and key stakeholders. Her recent work at Andrea Baker Consulting (ABC) included project managing the outreach and engagement strategy for UCSF Parnassus Heights, project managing the “Reframing Aging” Campaign, launching the City-wide Public Space Initiative (CPSI), and conducting community outreach on sea level rise for Field Operations Team: Resilient By Design.

Pooja also works very closely with Bayview/Hunters-Point businesses and stakeholders. She is involved in planning, organizing, and implementing several programs in the diverse Bayview/Hunters Point neighborhood. She joined Andrea Baker Consulting in 2017 as a Project Manager.

En2Action

En2action is a San Francisco-based organization with a mission to engage, empower, and inspire action to promote equitable growth, build resilient communities, and achieve transformative social good. En2action works with individuals, nonprofit and for-profit entities, delivering services through three program areas: community development, economic development, and education.

Andrea Baker, En2action’s founder and Executive Director has decades of experience with community outreach, corridor activation, and economic development across the Bay Area. Over decades, her team’s work and organizing efforts through the consulting firm Andrea

Baker Consulting (ABC), earned the trust and support of City agencies, local businesses, and community members. Now as a community-based nonprofit, En2action helps connect marginalized neighborhoods to each other, to greater economic activity, and to the greater community of San Francisco. All of En2action’s work is guided by its core values: people matter, communities need to be heard, and collaboration requires openness and transparency.

En2action developed and launched “Bayview Bistro”, an initiative developed through a racial and social equity lens to support start-up food businesses of color. The project, sponsored by San Francisco’s Public Utilities Commission’s Social Impact Partnership Program and the Office of Economic and Workforce Development, is an initiative to empower local food businesses in Bayview and expand their customer base. Bayview Bistro transformed a vacant lot into an urban food hub providing recurring sales opportunities for 8 low-income Black and People of Color Owned food businesses who live in or have a registered business in the Bayview/Hunters Point neighborhoods. This place-based approach to selecting vendors is intended to prioritize the local community’s access to some of the first opportunities in economic activity coming into Bayview—a neighborhood that has long struggled with economic disenfranchisement, harmful environmental conditions, and now a tide of gentrification.

Bayview Bistro started as a one-year transformation of a vacant lot into an urban food hub featuring a rotating lineup of local Bayview culinary vendors.

Since its inception, Bayview Bistro has worked with eight food vendors (Big H BBQ, Soul Bowl’z, Gumbo Social, Rome’s Kitchen, Yes Pudding, The Vegan Hood Chefs, Yo Soy Ceviche, and Peaches Patties).

Due to COVID-19, the site has since closed, but we continue to offer food from the same amazing Bayview chefs in the form of a weekly Bayview Bistro Box that is available for pick up at the Southeast Community Facility (1800 Oakdale Avenue) in the Bayview.

Each box features delicious meals crafted by Black-owned businesses in San Francisco’s Bayview neighborhood. Bayview Bistro Box features two box options to choose from - Omnivore and Plant-Forward. We now also offer add-on items for purchase like Chicken and Sausage Gumbo or a family-sized Banana Pudding from Yes Pudding. The boxes start at $39 (Date-Night), $65 (2-person), or $125 (4-person) and 100% of sales goes directly to vendors. Bayview Bistro vendors include: Rome’s Kitchen,The Vegan Hood Chefs,Gumbo Social,Peaches Patties, and Yes Pudding.

Bayview Bistro Box Holiday Ordering

Ordering your Holiday Fares at Bayview Bistro Boxes and support local restaurants

Donation / Volunteer

You can donate to En2action through contributing to their fiscal sponsor: Shipyard Trust for the Arts and make sure to note that you want the donation directed to En2action. Please send an email to Pooja Rajani at pooja@en2action.org to let her know you’ve made a contribution on En2action behalf.

To find out more about how to support En2action through volunteering please send and email to Pooja Rajani at pooja@en2action.org

Video

To find out more about En2action and Andrea Baker Consulting check out their video:

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“I mean, and we all know that unfortunately, the killing of George Floyd, right? For many, many people, not just Black and Brown people, but people all over this country to really sort of say, there is systemic racism and we need to do things differently.”

— Andrea Baker, Founder, En2Action & Andrea Baker Consulting

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