ABOUT CONTRA COSTA TOGETHER
Contra Costa Together is an emerging effort growing out of the California Accountable Communities for Health Initiative (CACHI), a multi-sector collaborative across California dedicated to making lasting transformational change to improve community health and well-being. CACHI serves as both a funder and a strategic partner for the ACHs. Learn More.
This opportunity united community-based organizations (CBOs), resident leaders, and county systems to form the Contra Costa ACH Stewardship Team. Rather than focus on a short-term project or creating another coalition, the team chose to use the grant to drive deeper change by improving how we work together and encouraging others to join in reimagining and co-creating solutions. CACHI is an initiative aimed at creating change across multiple sectors and systems.
Contra Costa has a history of cross-sector collaboration. For decades, organizations have worked together to expand access to conditions–such as health care, housing, and jobs–that ensure health and well-being. Despite these partnerships, communities of color — and other people facing harm from discrimination due to gender, sexual orientation, immigration status, and other identities — have been systematically marginalized by the very institutions responsible for meeting their needs. Chronic disinvestment in these same communities has caused harm for generations, and the targeted actions of the federal government threaten to halt local progress right now. We face yet another moment of uncertainty, chaos, and fear.
About Contra Costa Together
Contra Costa Together is an emerging effort grown out of California’s Accountable Communities for Health Initiative (CACHI). This grant brought together a diverse collection of community-based organizations, resident leaders, and county systems to form the Contra Costa ACH Stewardship Team. Instead of crafting another short-term project or forming one more coalition, the stewardship team chose to dive deeper by improving how we work together and encourage others to join in reimagining and co-creating a better future for ALL.
Download the CACHI Summary
Our Change Model
Together, we’re building a future where all can heal, belong, and thrive together.
Learn more about our community-centered approach, rooted in co-creation and equity. Hover over the graphic for definitions.
Shared Advocacy + Action
Work together on the issues that matter most. Support local leaders, bring in allies, and use stories, organizing, and data to push for changes in policies and practices.
Convening + Connecting
Engaging through co-design and hosting (formal and informal) in-person gatherings to get to know one another, share stories, grow trust, learn together, and reimagine and shape new future
Collective Capacity Building
Learn and grow together by building skills to bridge differences, stop harms, heal divides, and create belonging. This can happen through workshops, peer groups, or self-guided learning.
Communication + Shared Platform
Share our vision clearly and tell our stories so more people know about the movement. Invite new partners, highlight ways to get involved, and celebrate progress along the way.
Measurement + Meaning Making
Use both numbers and community stories to see where we are today and inspire new possibilities. Track progress on well-being, belonging, and the Vital Conditions — and use what we learn to guide future action.
Stewardship Team
- Solomon Belette, MBA, East Contra Costa Community Alliance (ECCCA)
- Kendra Carr, EdD, Co-Director, Contra Costa County Office of Racial Equity & Social Justice
- Roxanne Carrillo Garza, MSW, Senior Director, Healthy Contra Costa
- Jennifer Costa, Food Bank of Contra Costa and Solano
- Gigi Crowder, L.E., CEO, NAMI Contra Costa
- Kanwarpal Dhaliwal, Co-founder and Associate Director, RYSE
- Malena Data Ernaní, El Timpeno
- Ruth Fernández, EdD, Executive Director, First Five Contra Costa
- Peter Kim, Co-Director, Contra Costa County Office of Racial Equity & Social Justice
- Susun Kim, Esq., Executive Director, Family Justice Center
- Shannon Ladner-Beasley, MPH, Equity Manager, Contra Costa Health
- Marivel Mendoza, Executive Director, Hijas del Campo
- Mariana Moore, Senior Director, Ensuring Opportunity Campaign
- Artrese Morrison, Health Leads
- Duffy Newman, MHA, Executive Director. Programs & Partnerships, CCRHF
- Miriam Orantes, Equity Administrator, Contra Costa Health
- Dhoryan Rizo, Village Community Resource Center
- Rachael Rosekind, Root and Bloom
- Gilbert Salinas, MPA, Chief Equity Officer, Contra Costa Health
- Sabrina Saunders, Founder, One Accord Voting Project
- Jessica Travenia, Office of Racial Equity & Social Justice
Coaches
- David Gibbs, Senior Associate, Community Initiatives
- Monte Roulier, President, Community Initiatives
Contra Costa Together was shaped and launched through the leadership of founding Stewardship Team members. We are especially grateful to those who helped guide this work in its early stages, including:
- Philp H. Arnold Jr., Certified Medi-Cal Peer Support Specialist
- Vy Vo, Contra Costa Asian American, Pacific Islander Advocacy Coalition
Catalyzing Change Through Shared Stewardship
Shared stewardship is what grows the belonging and civic muscle we need to expand vital conditions and shape new legacies for thriving together.
All of us, as leaders, must be united in how we work together. In this sense, we all are stewards of collective will and resources. Through shared commitments and actions, stewards ensure that all people, today and for decades to come, are able to not only survive, but to thrive.
Stewards bridge by connecting across differences or the lines that often divide us, including political and religious beliefs, socio-economic status, sexual orientation, and racial, ethnic, cultural, and gender identity.
Stewards heal by holding space that supports understanding. By joining together through individual and collective healing practices, we begin to carve a path toward renewal.
Stewards build by co-creating a future where we all belong and we all thrive — together. In solidarity and starting with community members and groups who are suffering and struggling the most, we co-design processes to ensure that communities are building their own thriving futures–and blocking actions rooted in exclusion and injustice.
