The funniest moment yet of the Fall of 2011 goes to Andrea Millheim defeating a crew of teenage boys and children at a game of knockout during our After School Program. If you don't know, knockout, or bumps, as we used to call it, is a basketball game with a row of people who take turns trying to make a shot, using two basketballs. If the person behind you makes the shot before you, you are out. The teenage boys were not warned that Andrea was a small college All-American and Hall of Famer at her college. So...they were all mystified and ...

We just got back from the first annual Camp Shalom! Approximately 50 people spent the weekend at Golden Valley Christian Camp, and it was a special experience. The young people from East Oakland had new experiences such as archery, night hikes, s'mores and camp songs. Our theme, "God is our Father, and we are loved" was woven throughout the weekend. It really couldn't have been much better of a weekend. New friends were made by all of us...rich and poor, black and white, silly and serious, young and old, boisterous and shy, urban and ...

In April we'll be hosting a camp for young people from East Oakland. On the weekend of April 8-10 we will head East to the woods at Golden Valley Camp. Many of the children involved in our after school program have never been to anything like this, so it will definitely be an exciting trip for all of us. We're hopeful that this sort of retreat and camp experience can help our young people encounter their Creator in a new way. We also have the privilege of making the camp a partnership with our friends from Creekside Community Church. We ...

In case you haven't heard, we're about to launch a whole new basketball league for young men in cooperation with our friends from Trybe in East Oakland. It will be called the Oakland Independent League (OIL). Young men ages 16-25 will make up the five teams in the league. This Saturday morning, Team Shalom will scrimmage Trybe, and the following Saturday we will start league games at Roosevelt Middle School. Team Shalom has been practicing on Monday nights for several weeks now. We're excited for this new venture and the connections with ...

From the new website of our good friend and Board Member, Harry Williams...The statistics are startling but there is hope! Welcome To The Movement Did you know that America’s incarceration rate has risen 500% in 30 years. Did you know that today there are 2.3 million Americans behind bars? Did you know that the Sentencing Project predicts that 1 out every 3 black males can expect to go to prison in his life time if current trends continue? Did you know that Latino incarceration rates rose 16% between 2000 and 2008...?

Our Youth Director, Troy Bryant, and I were able to attend the CCDA (Christian Community Development Association) Conference in Chicago a couple of weeks ago, along with approximately 3,000 other people. We had a wonderful experience, connecting with fellow leaders from across the country, being inspired from some phenomenal speakers and gaining some new ideas about after school programs, hip hop culture, multicultural organizations and more. The CCDA was started 20 years ago when John Perkins, a Mississippi sharecropper's son, and Dr....

Check out this video filmed right here in East Oakland. Yes, good and beautifully creative things happen here too.

We recently learned that we will be using the same space we used for our Summer Program for our After School Program in September. We're very grateful to have a much bigger space than last year with the potential to better serve our young people. We'll be at 7721 MacArthur Blvd.