Category: Mailbag – Blog Post

Ever since our organization’s founder, Ed Howard, first started West Oakland Stories Positive Feeling Movement, we’ve gotten questions about what exactly we expected to accomplish as a nonprofit organization. Well, we have a lot we want to do, and we’re excited to share our vision with you:

Our vision for WOSPFM’s involvement in the community is to create a community presence that helps our friends and families be purposeful about seeing the positivity in themselves and their community members.  

We elders understand what it means to be bombarded with different sorts of negativity aimed at us and people who look like us. We’re also aware of how easy it is to give in to those impressions and lose sight of how valuable we are as individuals and as a collective group.

We elders of WOSPFM want to challenge our community members to reject the negative thoughts and impressions of ourselves and our communities that we have been fed for most of our lives.

We must cleanse ourselves of that negativity and create a new normal for ourselves and for future generations by actively practicing ways to send and receive positivity.

We’re excited about showing people how to make positivity a practice that includes positive thoughts, positive speak, and positive actions.

WOSPFM is run by community members just like you. We’re a group made up of elders, professionals, and students who are all brought together by the mission of spreading positivity throughout the community.

Going further, we believe that by sharing the stories from our elders and highlighting the positive elements of those stories, we can show how our elders’ past experiences continue to live on in the present.

There’s a lot of ways to go about achieving our mission. Right now we’re looking for contributors of all kinds. We’re a small team, so writers are invited to help us create blog posts about our communities, psychologists and physicians to share wellness tips and ideas, and all other elders who are willing to share stories from their past for other people to listen to and learn from.

If you would like to help but you don’t fit any of the previous descriptions, we could also use help managing our social media accounts, applying for grants, and many, many other tasks.

Our invitation to contribute extends to everyone who is willing to learn and is able to volunteer on a consistent basis. You can inquire further by emailing us at westoaklandstories@gmail.com.

WHAT IS WEST OAKLAND STORIES POSITIVE FEELING MOVEMENT (WOSPFM)?

We elders at WOSPFM have been getting some questions from the public that we would like to answer proudly and publicly, for all those who are following along in our journey together. In this “Mailbag” series, we’ll take some of the frequently asked questions about WOSPFM and “No Negative Speak” and give you the answers about what drives us and what drives our organization to achieve our mission.

What’s the deal with WOSPFM?

WOSPFM is about using the power of positive stories to inspire you followers and readers to get involved and go above and beyond sitting back and telling everyone how negative the world can be.

As an elder of the community, I believe storytelling will have a more positive impact on Black people than almost anything because it’s a rich tradition we all can relate to. On top of that, almost all of us can find examples of ourselves in the stories we hear.

Now, the challenge is to take things a step further and find some ways you can get involved in becoming a solution to longstanding issues in our communities.

We elders wholeheartedly believe you really can make positive change happen on both an individual basis and on a massive scale if you approach this journey with a positive commitment to yourself.

That’s all we have for this installment of the Mailbag series. If you have more questions you’d like for us to answer or other subjects you want to hear us speak about, we’d love to hear about it in the comments section. Until then, remember to show love to your neighbors and show love to yourself.