Gente Organizada ready to lay down roots in new office
Youth-focused nonprofit has more room for technology, physical activity
After years of bouncing from coffee shops to park benches to temporary office spaces, Gente Organizada has a permanent home.
With more than 6,000 square feet of space, the Pomona-based social action group’s new hub will provide room to host meditation circles, yoga classes, destressing rooms and even a news studio.
But the most important feature of the new space is that it gives community members a place to come together to address issues facing youths, parents and low-income families — something the group couldn’t offer in its previous 1,000-square-foot meeting area in downtown Pomona.
“The old space was super-small, it was just a couch and desks. Our events there always moved into the parking lot for overflow,” said Gente Organizada board member Brenda Gomez. “It became hard to build community when you don’t really have a true home for it.”
Located at 638 W. Holt Ave., the new office will allow the nonprofit to “lay down its roots” for years to come, said Ivan Hernandez, secretary for the Board of Directors.
“We’re just ready to settle down and activate this
space,” Hernandez said. “It’s been a long time coming.”
One of the highlights of the new location is the multimedia space built for members to produce video reports that can be shared. There’s also a sound booth that can be used for podcasts.
A “big part of the communications for them is going to be controlling the narrative as to what’s going on in their communities, and how they see it and experience it,” said Enrique Villa, director of strategic communications. “And then providing solutions or proposals to make our communities
better.”
There is also the potential for a community co-op that could teach members about “economic empowerment,” according to founder and executive director Jesus Sanchez. While those plans are still in the early stages, Sanchez said the idea has given the organization a “jolt of energy.”
The group officially bought the property in February, five years after it began saving for it. A majority of the funding comes from grants and donations. A capital campaign is in the works to help pay off the remaining loan debt of the
building, Sanchez said.
While a formal grand opening has been delayed until new front signage is ready, the group has hosted multiple community events at its new space.
Meanwhile, the group’s ownership of the property is symbolic in a city seeing rapid changes, Sanchez said.
“This is definitely a kind of a victory for the community, for young people and the immigrant parents that we work with,” Sanchez said during a recent tour of the building. “But we also don’t take for granted that a lot of our members are being
forced out of the city.
“They can’t afford to live here,” he continued. “Where we moved in, it’s a street and an area that’s getting gentrified as we speak.”
A new cannabis dispensary is next door, while more housing is slated for the corridor in the coming years.
“But I think as an organization, we’re embracing that too, because this is where we’re needed and it’s going to require us to grow and be ready in different areas of our work to be able to meet the struggles and needs that exist in this community,” Sanchez said. “We’re not going away.”
The relocation to Holt Avenue represents a new chapter for the organization that began as a small movement led by parents dealing with school-based issues at Lexington Elementary School in 2013.
“It really grew out of us trying to create transparency that we felt was lacking,” Sanchez said. “We knew that was just the start in Pomona.”
Since then, Gente Organizida has expanded with multiple groups including parents, students and youth under its umbrella — Pomona Students Union, Padres Unidos and Pomona Rising.
Most recently, two new groups were introduced, Here and Queer and Pomona Next Gen, supporting LGBTQ resources and advocacy for Pomona Unified School District elementary and middle school students, respectively.
The groups have tackled a wide range of civic issues such as budget transparency, reimaging public safety, mental health advocacy and voter outreach.
Some of these efforts have led to local changes, including in 2019 when the group shed light on Pomona Unified’s failure to spend appropriately on its high-need students under
Pomona social action group Gente Organizada moved from a 1,000-square-foot office downtown to 638 W. Holt Ave. in a building offering a much larger 6,000-square-foot space for educational and physical activities for youths and low-income families.
the Local Control and Accountability Plan, or LCAP, a statewide initiative to guide spending in certain areas in schools. The district planned to use LCAP funds for school police and other security programs but then reallocated $5.4 million for a variety of resources including counselors and programming in science, technology, arts and music, and math.
In recent years, the group has published various transparency reports examining local police budgets, city spending on youth and equity at Pomona Unified schools.
A 2021 report issued by the group found that more than 22% of young people arrested in Pomona are Black, though Black residents represent only 5.6%
of the city’s population. The school district serves about 23,000 students, more than 85% of whom are Latino, according to Ed-Data.
After Gente Organizada presented the report to school officials, the district in June 2021 moved to remove police on campus heading into the fall semester. The report was credited as a factor for that decision, said then-Superintendent Richard Martinez. The district months later reversed course.
These campaigns have paid off for Hernandez and Gomez, who both graduated from UC Berkeley this year and credit Gente Organizada with giving them social action skills to address issues in their community.
“The biggest thing for me was learning in high school that we can change issues we see on our own, without adults,” said Hernandez, who hopes to use his political science degree locally. “That’s something I never forgot.”
For Gomez, who is pursuing a career in education, she hopes to one day return to Pomona Unified to teach and “enact change directly for future students.”
Sanchez sees the organization leaving a lasting imprint on youths. That starts with giving them the tools and skills to lead campaigns for issues important to them, he said.
Any youth, parent or community member is welcome to join the group with no costs involved. Recruitment
efforts are typically word-of-mouth or through a community action, Sanchez said.
“Every campaign we’ve launched has come with a lesson, whether its budget transparency or social equity, this is important,” Sanchez said. “But it’s always youth that are leading these movements every step of the way.”
There’s no further proof of this than in the leadership ranks of the organization’s board members: six out of 11 board members are young people either in high school or college; the rest are parents.
Members such as Destiny Rivera, 19, a 2020 Fremont Academy graduate who is now a sophomore at Scripps College, said the group’s new location
can become a safe place for youths. This was something she said wasn’t available during her time in high school.
“Growing up, home was the only place that I would go right after school because parks were dangerous and there was no after-school programs,” Rivera said.
But now, she says if she ever wanted to host a Zumba class or a mental health workshop for youth, there is a place.
“Now, I not only have just permission but encouragement to take advantage of this space and create it into something that I can offer others to step into,” Rivera said. “Space is power and we’re just starting to tap into that here.”