Kollab Heroes: Desi Danganan - Executive director Kultivate Labs
Kultivate Labs is a Filipino led non-profit economic development and arts organization. Desi and his team at Kultivate Labs have been supporting and cultivating Filipino businesses and community way before COVID-19. This started with Undiscovered SF, a monthly Filipino night market festival in SOMA Phillipinas. The night market is centered around Filipino-American food, music, and retail businesses and the program aims to promote and preserve cultural diversity in the neighborhood. Undiscovered SF strives to create new economic opportunities and encourage entrepreneurship in the low and middle income Filipino community.
Approximately 20% of California nurses are Filipino, thus the COVID-19 pandemic is having a disproportionate impact on them as they have to work double or triple shifts. Additionally, Filipino businesses such as restaurants and food trucks are struggling to survive while stay at home order is in place. Danganan surveyed his network of entrepreneurs and found that a lot of them are feeling the devastating economic effects.
Desi said, “We recently surveyed our network of entrepreneurs, some say they’re seeing a 90% drop in revenue. Some of them say they only have 2 months worth of cash to survive.” At this rate he fears that it is possible for 75% of the Filipino businesses that they work with could disappear within 3 months. It was really a big Hail Mary to see what we could do quickly to try to save these restaurants. The issue at hand now was how to address the needs of Filipino nurses and healthcare workers in the front-line, and the community and business in the SOMA Phillipina district.. A lot of the Filipinos here happen to be seniors. A lot of them also happen to be undocumented or lower income. And these are the populations that are most impacted by the economic devastation of COVID-19.
In an effort to connect the dots between Filipino healthcare workers and Filipino businesses, “we started the #FillipinoFeedTheFrontLines in an effort to stabilize Filipino food businesses and to help frontline workers working to heal our communities. The goal is to raise $100,000 to generate 10,000 meals to feed those in need and to keep the Filipino restaurant businesses going” shared Danganan. This project is entirely crowdsourced with donations coming from the Bay Area and around the nation. The money donated pays the restaurants to make food to meals for healthcare workers and communities in need.
Another project Kultivate Labs is working on to address issues of COVID-19 is Kapwa Garden. This project is inspired by and stemmed from the success of another project called Undiscovered Court, a parking lot that was turned into a basketball court and a community center. Kapwa Garden will be a new public space and a new Filipino Cultural center in SOMA Phillipina that is designed to address some of the issues that are emerging from COVID-19. Desi knows many of the residents in SOMA Phillipina live in cramped conditions. “One-bedroom apartments often have multiple families living in them. Living in cramped quarters can potentially present mental health problems during the stay at home order when there isn’t much space around.”
Danganan tells us that the city of San Francisco has given him and Kultivate Labs an 8,000-square-feet parking lot. He plans on designing really cool, culturally relevant murals on the floor. Those murals will actually be a grid line that emphasizes social distancing. Desi plans to add greenspace to the grid line and turn it into a labyrinth of fruit trees where the community can pick fruit. There will also be areas where people can exercise and meditate while maintaining proper social distancing.
Kapwa Garden is projected to open in July! We can’t wait to see it, thank you for your passion and hardwork!