A
Brief History of SOMCANSOMCAN was founded in 2001 by a group of grassroots organizations committed to serving the needs of youth, seniors, veterans, the Filipino community, low-income residents, and the homeless in the South of Market neighborhood. Initially we came together informally in response to the unprecedented and unrestricted level of gentrification and displacement that we were seeing in our community, which included individual residents, small businesses, and non-profit organizations. Our goal was to support community members in immediate threat of eviction in the form of offering space for meetings, assisting with needed resources, and providing a collective voice. We found that this form of community organizing was very successful at leveraging the power needed for residents to be heard and achieve their goals.
Through SOMCAN's initial support of residents in imminent danger of displacement and our subsequent victories, we realized:
- there was an unmet need in the community of an organization specifically
directed at supporting resident organizing and empowerment through
training, community building and mentorship, and resource information;
- there was an unmet need in the community of an organization
dedicated to networking SoMa social justice and social service organizations
with the aim of comprehensively and collectively addressing community
needs;
- while SoMa residents often lack the resources needed
to address neighborhood issues individually, collectively we had
a great deal of power and influence. Based on these observations, SOMCAN
formally established itself and obtained fiscal sponsorship through
the Community Development Institute.
SOMCAN takes a community building approach to neighborhood improvement.
SOMCAN is creating a vehicle for community members to come together to
develop and implement a collective agenda. The vision of the organization
is to enhance the ability of SoMa's community-based infrastructure
to attract resources for community building work, influence public policy
decisions, identify and nurture new leadership among people of color,
youth, women, low-income and immigrant people, and build relationships
and social capital that can foster collective action for community improvement.