Vasa Educational Services dba Vallejo Project

Vallejo Project aims to bridge the gap between industry and education. We hope to engage local youth in the arts, wellness and trades of their community as change makers who are leaders in their chosen fields of work.
Vallejo Project envisions a world where every young person is equipped to build a sustainable, healthy, meaningful life despite the barriers of poverty and trauma that they may face. We imagine Vallejo strengthened by new generations of youth and young adults who are inspired to give back to their community as role models, advocates, entrepreneurs, and leaders. With the empowerment they receive at Vallejo Project they can efficiently articulate and implement solutions to challenges that they may face in their community.

VP utilizes Vallejo’s Unity Garden, a community garden located at 2160 Sacramento Street. This base is a unique opportunity for community members, youth, and other stakeholders to work together at restoring an abandoned lot that was once filled with sand and garbage, turning it into a multi-level food forest with internationally-influenced farming techniques.
Our youth participants learn the various farming techniques to adequately plant, grow, cultivate, and harvest many different types of produce and native plants to the area of Vallejo. Our goal is to teach youth that they can grow and cultivate many different types of produce and vegetation right in their own backyard. The community garden project is where VP carries out our Urban Agriculture experiential learning program and it strengthens our participant's knowledge of growing food and their connection to nature. With the growing popularity of our community garden, we aim to teach the practice of environmental sustainability through local gardening.
Vallejo Project’s Urban Agriculture experiential learning program will strengthen youth’s connection to nature and have an impact on them by teaching them about ecological systems and how to farm sustainably. This program will provide life and employment skills that will offer them pathways for success and a lifelong connection to the land and their local communities as they move into adulthood. Now is our opportunity to begin investing in transitional age youth.
The impact that the Youth Urban Agriculture Pathway at Unity Garden will have is as follows:
● Maintain the Unity Garden’s status as a free educational resource for the community, rather than a membership-based, subsidized-beds model.
● Leverage curriculum developed with UC Berkeley undergraduate students. ● Identify workflow processes, schedules [mornings: watering, weeding, use of tools; afternoons: plant care education, horticulture techniques/vocabulary, business mgmt.]. ● Introduce concepts of operations management [input, process, output]. ● Identify accounts payable and accounts receivable categories [farmer’s market; charity work]. ● Make cost/benefit analysis of processes in order to build participants’ skills in this area. [E.g., buy fertilizer in small amounts vs. rent a large truck and pick up manure from a local farm; buy new tools vs. buy fruit trees. Consider qualitative and quantitative outputs, long- and short-term gains, major and minor needs].
● Build disengaged Vallejo youth’s connection to nature and working with the land.

Vallejo is culturally diverse, with about 88% of its citizens broken into four major cultural aspects: 20% black, 19% white, 23% asian, and 26% latinx. Our team is as diverse as the city. Vallejo Project has worked with leaders in each of the disparate communities to ensure that we reach and are able to serve all of these communities.
The high quality curricula that Vallejo Project is using are based on state recognized standards and taught by experienced people in their fields. Our programs are cost-effective as Vallejo Project has low overhead and many of the administrators are volunteers. Our governing and advisory board are made up of professionals from a tableau of cultures and careers. The diversity of our team makes it easier for us to unite the economic and ethnically diverse communities of Vallejo.
Our board and advisors make up a multicultural, multinational, and multidisciplinary body. With a medical doctor, educators, Kaiser research manager, artists, and a professional tradesman, our board members come from diverse backgrounds, all unified in what they can do to help all the youth of Vallejo.

Collaborations with our partners are critical to our development. Vallejo Project continues to reach out to public, private and community-based organizations for grants and donations to further our work. Our local efforts have secured $85,000 from all sources combined, $35,000 in grants, $40,000 in individual and organizational donations, and $10,000 from internal fundraising. The requested funding is additional seed money. This funding would grow current projects as well as be leveraged to bring in more donations; our ultimate goal is to be self-sustaining.
CURRENT COLLABORATIONS:
The City of Vallejo partnered with Vallejo Project on this year's Vallejo Project Youth Leadership program with a grant for $15,000
Solano County Department of Public Health Partnered with Vallejo Project on a youth mentorship program. Youth Leaders developed curriculum to share with peers to engage in conversation about the impact of legalized marijuana on youth.
The Touro University MPH graduates are prepared to provide technical service and work with Vallejo Project to support and promote public health, including county and state public health departments, hospitals, managed care organizations, local, federal, and governmental agencies, community health organizations, research and academic institutions, philanthropic and voluntary health agencies, and non-profit organizations.
Our partnerships with the Vallejo City Unified School District and the Greater Vallejo Recreation District as vendors of extended learning programs, enrichment, and arts classes illustrate our value to the community,
Vallejo Project will continue selling surplus community-made products such as raised garden beds and get local donations.