Bethel Community Presbyterian Church in many ways was already functioning as a resilience hub, precisely the reason why Sustainability Manager Dr. Hoi-Fei Mok approached the church leadership about joining the Resilience Hubs Initiative cohort. The site’s food pantry and community garden through its relationship with a local nonprofit organization are some of its existing assets.

By leveraging existing assets we are transforming the church into a resilience hub

 History

The church has a rich history dating back to 1913 as two separate churches (Ashland Presbyterian Church in 1913, and Bethel Presbyterian Church in 1933), which merged in 1955 and once had more than 300 members. As noted on their website, 

“In 1998, it began a season of redevelopment, led by Rev. Sarah Reyes Gibbs, the first woman of color to pastor the church. Under her leadership, the church started the San Leandro Community Food Pantry, formed partnerships with the Interfaith Homeless Network, and collaborated with Los Mensajeros de Dios, a Spanish-speaking ministry.”

Its new dynamic duo is the dynamic husband-wife team of Michael and Erina Kim-Eubanks, who began their co-ministry in 2019.

Emergency Preparedness

With food insecurity as an ongoing emergency, Bethel’s food pantry sees an estimated 200 residents waiting in line each week to receive canned food and fresh produce. The food pantry acts as a key communication and outreach channel for underserved neighbors in our community. They hope to update their kitchen with new appliances so that they can eventually use it to better serve both church members and community residents.

Furthermore, Bethel’s Facilities Committee has agreed to prioritize installing air conditioning and a more advanced air filtration system, and transforming the campus into an off-grid facility through solar with battery backup.

“We hope to eventually become a cooling center in heat crises, a place of refuge in the midst of wildfire smoke, and a charging center and source of alternative power in the midst of recurring outages,” said Church co-pastor Michael Kim-Eubanks. “We’d like to be added to the city’s list of cooling centers.”

Sustainability

Bethel is excited to have formed a robust partnership with local nonprofit San Leandro 2050, a climate resilience-focused organization which received funding to plan and implement a community garden at the church. This garden will provide fresh fruits and vegetables year round and offer work days and intentional space for learning and building relationships. San Leandro 2050 broke ground on the community garden in October 2022 during a lively event drawing close to 50 participants, who provided input about future programming and got their hands dirty by sheet mulching the area. 

Future proposed projects include composting, planting more trees, and hosting more community workshops. Besides the garden, the church’s Facilities Committee has been focused on both short- and long-term goals, prioritizing energy efficiency projects as part of its work plan, fixing their well for water resilience, and installing solar as a long-term energy resilience strategy.

Community

The church’s commitment to Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC) populations is front and center through both its existing programming and future plans. They already serve roughly 80 church members at Bethel Community, which is a majority BIPOC congregation serving every age bracket. Developing as a resilience hub will help it to serve the neighborhood surrounding the the church, which is located in a low income census tract that includes Jefferson Elementary School across the street (with 96% BIPOC enrollment and 71% economically disadvantaged) and San Leandro High School a few blocks north (with 92% BIPOC enrollment and 57% economically disadvantaged). 

Bethel provides resources and services to multiple communities outside of its church members. The church currently leverages its facilities to serve as a polling place, host low-cost piano lessons, and organize forums such as the San Leandro Black Narrative Project. In addition to its long-standing food pantry, Bethel is addressing housing insecurity by building five micro-housing units and forming a permanent assistive housing program for unhoused individuals. In the long run, they have the vision to transform an existing room on the church campus into a Community Resilience Information Center, which will become a meeting room, co-working space, and resource library for the broader community.

Beyond their own campus, Bethel Community is proud to have partnerships with other churches and non-profit organizations in San Leandro and other parts of the East Bay. These include the Interfaith Homeless Network of San Leandro, Building Futures for Women and Children, and Iglesia Mensajeros De Dios.

“We hope to maximize our existing partnerships with other nonprofits and community organizations, to provide operational coordination and mutual goal setting that forms a web of community support around our site resilience work,” said co-pastor Erina Kim-Eubanks.

“We hope to eventually hire a part-time project coordinator who will move the project forward, from researching contractors to helping to coordinate events and activities.This capacity building work at the Bethel Community site will both utilize and expand upon already existing resources, which is much more resource efficient than building both physical and programming infrastructure from scratch,”  she noted.