Come Meet the Neighbors

Bring your block-party spirit to “Meet the Neighbors” – a celebration put on by Centro Community Partners (Centro) of the diverse and innovative local small businesses around us, and opportunity to re-discover our growing home community.

Join Centro for the launch of the “Meet the Neighbors Guide” – the first online guide to help you shop local and small in the Bay Area. They will also award the “2016 Small Business Owners of the Year” and present the “Opportunity & Social Equity Maker” award to two exceptional economic development stewards in the Bay Area.

In Support of 

Tickets to “Meet the Neighbors” support Centro – an Oakland based non-profit benefiting local women, minority, low-income and underserved small business entrepreneurs. Come and you’ll be supporting the forward-thinking and accessible entrepreneurship programs Centro provides year-round.

Sponsorships Available

Centro welcomes you to explore three sponsorship levels. They were created to gather support from individuals and organizations woven into the fabric of the community. Another huge help is helping to spread the word about the event.

Anyone who aligns with Centro can find a meaningful and accessible way to support. 

Event Details

• Event name: Meet the Neighbors
• Date & time: Wed. December 7th from 6:30 – 9:30 pm
• Place: Impact Hub Oakland
• Address: 2323 Broadway, Oakland, CA 94612 (View Map)
• Public transportation: 19th Street Bart Station

Tickets and More Information

• More event info: centrocommunitypartners.org/meet-the-neighbors-event

How to get tickets: meet-the-neighbors.eventbrite.com

Hope to see you guys there!

On Dignity, Employment, and Getting a Job You Love

“We must give meaning to this Organization’s promise to ‘reaffirm faith in the dignity and worth of the human person’ and to take the world forward to a sustainable future…[We] have an historic opportunity and duty to act, boldly, vigorously and expeditiously, to turn reality into a life of dignity for all, leaving no one behind.” (UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, Dec. 4, 2014)

If you are anything like me than you have attended college, performed extracurricular activities, got involved, created connections to get a well deserved and respected job afterwards. Graduating from college you have a lot of expectations of how the real world may be like, lots of hopes, dreams and aspirations. You may have thought how valuable your education is and all the hard work you have put into it. You have all this experience and preparedness from various mentors that you feel that you are ready to step into the real world and do the job well! Because all you care about is being ready enough, educated enough, prepared enough to work and contribute and be an asset to any organization and be a professional! You have been prepared to work hard and you are pumped up to get started and show your skills and prove yourself.

However, when you get to your job, all your preparations and studies seem to vanish and all that you have been taught and was prepared for and imagined for some reason no longer applies.

I think it’s safe to say that you, like me, would want a safe place to work in, you are probably seeking stability, trust, respect, a descent, fair income to be able to support yourself and your family, to be able to live and afford the expenses we all have to deal with on a daily basis, you are seeking to be valued, may be recognized for your hard work, you want some acknowledgement or proof that you matter, bottom line you want a balance and a quality of life that would surely come from having a good paying, honorable, respectful position.

So what’s wrong with this picture? Where is the disconnect? Why are the puzzle pieces not fitting together? Why are we experiencing such a divide between what we are prepared for in college and what we actually experience on the job?