Oakland Natives Give Back

The Oakland Natives Give Back Fund (ONGBF) held their 1st Annual Back To School Youth Expo in August to give back to the city of Oakland, while empowering youth with what they consider to be the building block of success – education.

Oakland Unified School District (OUSD) and the City of Oakland partnered with OGNBF to give over 730 book bags with school supplies at Oakland City Hall as part of the OUSD's Attend and Achieve campaign. The organization also received support from the Future Foundation, Usher’s New Look Foundation, The Lost Ones, and the Effective Teachers for Oakland Task Force.

More than 900 people attended Youth Expo 2008, where they enjoyed an afternoon filled with fun activities, gifts and entertainment. Youth learned about the importance of education as well as violence prevention and public safety as part of the city of Oakland’s Measure Y campaign.

The event provided of a variety of entertainment and appearances by celebrities and professional athletes which included: the Fashion Rocks youth fashion show, spoken word artists Ise Lyfe and Oakland native Jimmy Reign, dance trio Total Package, Sacramento Kings’ Forward Shareef Abdur-Rahim, Boston Celtics’ Leon Powe , San Francisco 49ers’ Allen Rossum, and Oakland natives MTV News Host Sway Calloway, Tony! Toni! Tone! recording artist Dwayne Wiggins and his nephew, 13-year-old Ali-Khan Lochin, who served as the DJ.

Motivational speeches were given by various city and school officials, including Oakland Chief of Staff Leslie Littleton, Director of Education Kitty Epstein, OUSD State Administrator Vincent Matthews and OUSD Interim Superintendent Roberta Mayor. Other notables included speaker Keith L. Brown, who served as the event’s master of ceremonies and entrepreneur Michael Parker, founder of Lifeskills 411.

Oakland Natives Give Back Fund was co-founded by Delicia “Dee Dee” Abdur-Rahim, Nyeisha DeWitt and Tameka Raymond (all natives of Oakland) who want to be an example to all Oakland natives by declaring that “your commitment to the community in which you reside should not supersede your contribution to the community in which you were reared”. Currently, ONGBF is fiscally sponsored by the Future Foundation.

Uptown Liz founder, Ramona Russell, was happy to volunteer at this event by passing out book bags to the eager students. To support education by shopping, go to the education page on Uptown Liz.

Photo captions: Top left photo - the crowd at the Youth Expo 2008. Bottom right photo - Co-founders Tameka Raymond (left), Delicia "Dee Dee" Abdur-Rahim and Nyeisha DeWitt.