OurSpace World, Inc. (OSW)

If selected as a winner, the Elevate Prize funding, mentorship, and support would be used to not only support implementation of our two flagship, integrated programs (Project Teach22 and The Ujima Initiative -- see organizational pitch deck here), but also support land purchase to launch our Sovereignty Incubator*Activist Village (SI*AV), a makerspace guided by the Just Transition framework. Our current programs build economic power among Black people in Maryland and surrounding areas in the face of climate change, and are anchored by a new satellite community farm that OSW has helped to start in Southern Prince George's County, Maryland. The SI*AV will support the incubation of new and existing cooperatives, and serve as a training site to build skills in Black youth and adults around farming, building, as well as community organizing. It will provide fertile ground for aspiring and current farmers, builders, healers, and educators, equipping them with the knowledge, skills and experience required to join or form sustainable communities that fundamentally shift the paradigms of how we relate to each other, to money, and to the earth.

Founded in 2011 by the grandson of a sharecropper, OurSpace World, Inc. (OSW) has an ultimate vision of a sustainable world where all communities have culturally-centered spaces in which to live and thrive. We are a Black-led, Maryland-based nonprofit that provides an intergenerational pathway to thriving, as the economy shifts from extractive to regenerative. 

The mission of OSW is to help systematically disadvantaged farmers, builders, healers, and educators attain sovereignty and sustainability through partnerships and wise resource acquisition and management. Our 3 integrated programs are: Project Teach22 (educating 22nd century-ready farmers & builders); The Ujima Initiative (cultivating groups committed to living and working collaboratively); and Calabash (funneling resources to communities). In the face of climate change and historical legacies of oppression, OSW offers an intergenerational solution to the widening wealth gap and narrowing job market that relegates Black people to low-income, low-skilled jobs and continues the generational cycle of oppression. Our work also improves health, food apartheid, land access, and generational trauma.

Ultimately, we see our role as facilitators and amplifiers for the crucial work of collective economic power building that solidifies a new self-sustaining reality that achieves liberation and sovereignty in harmony with the planet.

Hastening climate crisis. Generational poverty. Poor health outcomes. Displacement, exclusion, exploitation. Crumbling city infrastructure. Isolation in a technologically connected world. Racial trauma. We see root causes of these interconnected realities coming from systemic oppression that upholds white supremacy, colonialism, and capitalism. Changing these realities requires fundamental paradigm shifts in narrative, approach, and focus leading to tangible pathways toward sovereignty.

OSW stewards three integrated programs (Project Teach22 [T22], The Ujima Initiative [TUI], and Calabash) all rooted in culture, history, land, healing, and sovereignty for Black, African, African-American people.

T22, our premier educational apprenticeship program, empowers vulnerable and economically disadvantaged individuals with skills and knowledge pertaining to small-scale, regenerative farming practices and ecological building skills for farm infrastructure and small affordable homes. 

Through TUI, OSW facilitates its "FarmVille" process, which links people together, assembles sustainable communities, and supports the formation of high-trust collectives that then pool resources and raise funds independently to support cooperatively-organized land-based social enterprises. 

Finally, Calabash funnels resources to emerging and existing communities through fiscal sponsorship and technical assistance. T22 and TUI are further integrated to enable cultivation of several culturally-centered, mutually-supportive, self-sustaining cooperatives that simultaneously break the generational cycle of poverty and contribute to climate renewal.

At first glance, the individual components of our approach (workforce development, cooperative formation support, technical assistance and fiscal sponsorship) are not unique. However, by taking an integrated approach to our three programs and targeting families and Black & Brown womxn with children, the impact-potential of our approach sets OSW apart.

Our work empowers individuals and groups with the awareness & skills (Project Teach22), the tools & community (The Ujima Initiative), and the land & resources (Calabash) to thrive for generations to come.

We believe that the most effective path to broad and systemic change for the health of all people and the planet is to facilitate the growth and proliferation of sustainable communities, and eliminate barriers to achieving this where possible (e.g., providing fiscal sponsorship and technical assistance to smaller mission-aligned entities to enable access to grant funding opportunities). Individuals and groups can begin or end engagement with our programs at any stage, and our goal is to cross-pollinate groups across programs on a continuum that engenders growth and sustainability, leading to liberation and true resilience.

Our three programs build long-term sustainability by inviting our people to see and take part in a different possibility for themselves, their families and their communities. Because we target families and womxn with children, the impact will continue for generations to come.

Project Teach22 (T22) provides hands-on, apprentice-style skills-training in farming and natural building to low-income individuals who visit our community gardens/farms.

The Ujima Initiative (TUI) is currently guiding an 11-member collective (8 Black families) through a high-touch process of weekly meetings to establish group values, develop conflict resolution processes, and build a cooperatively-owned regenerative community farm from the ground up. The collective is finalizing its operating agreement and State registration, will soon open a bank account with a Black bank, and has begun its first farming season, which will yield produce to nourish the surrounding community.

Calabash fiscally sponsors mission-aligned projects, recently enabling two all-Black cooperatives to purchase a 24acre parcel of land for culturally-centered afro-ecology events post pandemic. OSW has also fiscally sponsored solar panel installation and farm infrastructure building at a Black-owned Washington DC farm.

Finally, OSW is actively cultivating partnerships with organizations and funders to jumpstart activities that will lay the foundation for sustainability.