Abstract
Much of Oakland is considered a "food desert" as the entire community area lacks access to supermarkets and access to affordable, fresh healthy food. Instead, low income communities in west and east Oakland are filled with fast food restaurants and liquor stores that disempowered the community, contributed to unhealthy lifestyles, and created socially and environmentally irresponsible food chains. The Oakland Food Connection or the OFC is working to improve the quality of life for residents by increasing their nutritional knowledge and access to healthy local food. Specifically, the OFC's mission is to: "promote nutritional awareness, access to healthy foods and the connections between people and our planet". The simplicity of the mission is strong because it makes it memorable and engaging for volunteers, donors, and staff. However, it could be strengthened by specifying the specific community it works in. It also should include the methods it tries to go about these large, over arching goals because it supports a variety of programs from farmers' markets to urban gardening programs. However, the actual work they engage in is not expressed in the mission statement. The mission statement also needs to be narrowed down so that it can be better used to guide the organization and help the users choose programs that should be pursued or expanded and omit those that are distracting from the proposed goals.
