COVID-19 - East Oakland Small Business Support

The Product Lab team has partnered with Oakland Frontline Healers, East Oakland Entrepreneurship Forum, and others, to create and deliver COVID-19 safety supplies to small businesses operating during the ongoing pandemic, throughout the Fall of 2020. This work is funded by the 2019 federal CARES act, and is part of a series of programs sponsored by the City of Oakland, and overseen by the City’s Economic Development Department.

At the same time the Product Lab team and other local designers and fabricators were working on production of medical PPE in the early days of Shelter in Place, Oakland Frontline Healers (OFH) sprung into action, distributing PPE and other supplies that people in Oakland needed. Their various members work in food safety, housing rights, COVID testing, medical treatment, anti-violence activism, de-incarceration, and more.

This project will source materials donations, negotiate discounts, consolidate information, and provide free materials to business owners. It will also conduct remote and onsite consultation for each business to assess and help address the unique needs of each. We will be concentrating our efforts in the most highly COVID-impacted areas of Oakland - in East Oakland - and prioritizing the highly trafficked businesses which are open now, or will be open soon. These include locally owned corner stores, food markets, restaurants, and others.

We know that businesses need more than supplies and equipment to operate safely during these times. These businesses also need best practices for engaging customers or workers who might not feel the same threat as others, quarantine and notification, testing protocols and sites, and more. OFH recognizes that reducing transmission requires behavioral change, and this program allows us to better help businesses accept and act on their responsibility to their employees, customers, vendors, and others.

We will be collecting data about the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on these businesses and sharing that information with our partners who are working on parallel efforts. We’ll also be making referrals for these businesses to other support organization partners, including the Mills College Graduate Business School consulting program, Uptima Bootcamp, Alliance for Community Development. We are working closely with Black Cultural Zone as they design and establish their Black Cultural Hub in East Oakland, at Eastmont Mall.