Good Table News for April & May
Volunteers on our last Community Day, February 29, 2020
We’re trying something new in this space: incorporating news from all the entities that will eventually be housed in El Sobrante at the site of the former Adachi nursery. For those of you who have been following our progress for awhile, this change comes because Mira Vista United Church of Christ has now legally changed its name to: The Good Table United Church of Christ.
We have also set up a new non-profit called: The Good Table Café which will operate our pay-what-you-can and pay-it-forward community café plus manage the gathering space’s schedule of educational, spiritual, and cultural activities offered by The Good Table UCC, Planting Justice, and other community groups. Starting a new non-profit during a global pandemic might not be ideal, but we’re doing it!
While current circumstances prevent us from gathering physically for our Community Work + Fun Days and have pushed our potential opening of the café, nursery, and gathering space into 2021, we hope this newsletter and our presence on various social media platforms including our growing website the-good-table.org will continue to gather and support the various communities that will be served by The Good Table. Stay connected, be safe, and be healthy!
We are very close to completing our application to the Contra Costa County building department and we may still be able to submit it during this public health emergency. But whether we submit or not in the near future, we are in the process of refining our plans, getting bids from contractors, and we continue to prepare for construction to happen when we are able to begin, even though we are unable to hold our community work + fun days and our volunteer-led demo efforts are stopped. Sadly, however this new set of challenges means that there is little chance of being able to open before 2021.
Mira Vista Church has been planning to create a pay-what-you-can, pay-it-forward community café for nearly four years. In preparation to do this, we actively sought guidance from the One World Everybody Eats Foundation, an organization that supports pay-what-you-can cafés across the country. We also worked with entrepreneurs and restaurant folks to develop a business plan with a double-bottom line for financial sustainability and successful social service delivery. And with the help of students at Berkley Law and its New Business Law Clinic led by Professor William Kell, we have now formed a secular non-profit to operate the café and community gathering space called The Good Table Café.
The Good Table Café will be governed by a small board of directors drawn initially from the church and the community who will then select and hire a café director and set policies for this new non-profit. The current public health emergency made it necessary to appoint this first board and have an initial meeting online, but we have done it! The officers and members of The Good Table Café board of directors are: Elise Hariton, secretary; Heinz Lankford; treasurer, Theresa Hardy, Vice-President; and Melinda V. McLain, President and Incorporator. We hope to add one more board member with significant food and restaurant experience soon.