Greetings Oceanside Community Foundation – happy Fall!
As we begin to head into the Holiday Season, let’s hope for a more festive time surrounded by family and friends.
Now in our 14th year of grantmaking, we’re inviting nonprofit organizations to submit project proposals for programs that support academic, social development and enrichment programs that help students living in Oceanside in grades K-12 make up for lost time. Through our current grant cycle, we want to work with local organizations closest to our youth to ensure that as a community we’re uplifting our young people academically, socially and emotionally. Thank you to our members who helped by answering the focus survey several months back! The deadline for applications is December 3 and the guidelines can be accessed here.
We hope to be in contact soon with a fun Holiday membership appreciation update. In the meantime, please enjoy our new member feature and an impactful story from past grantee the Tariq Khamisa Foundation.
Please know that your generosity is making a difference in the lives of so many. None of us can do it alone but together we can make a great impact on the community that we love. We are better together!
Member: Alison Aragon
Alison Aragon currently serves as the Director of Development at Pro Kids – First Tee, San Diego—an after-school golf and education program with locations in City Heights and Oceanside. She is a born and raised San Diegan, proud Jamulian, and moved to Oceanside in May 2020. She quickly started volunteering at Last Chance at Life All Breed Rescue and Adoption in Oceanside and is still attempting to learn how to surf. Alison graduated from the University of San Diego’s MA in Nonprofit Leadership and Management program in 2017 and Fundraising Academy in 2019. She is particularly passionate about equitable access to education, shifting power through community philanthropy, and petting all the dogs. She has worked at several foundations and nonprofits throughout Southern California since 2013 including The San Diego Foundation, National Conflict Resolution Center, and Play Equity Fund. Always learning from those around her, she is currently a member of the Latina Giving Circle, Emerging Practitioners in Philanthropy (EPIP) San Diego, and is grateful to now include OCF on that list.
“Giving to those around you is how philanthropy was modeled for me at a young age, but no one called it that. We called it “showing up”. I was taught that even if you don’t have much, you always have enough to listen, learn, and show up. I’m grateful to be in a place where I can show up with a little cash in my hand, but it’s still all about learning for me. Listen to the community, learn from the community, grow as a person, repeat. I joined OCF because I believe community-based philanthropy in its purest form can be an honest, direct reflection of a favorite quote I read outside of an elementary school once; ‘community is a place where people care about each other.’”
Grantee Spotlight: Tariq Khamisa Foundation
Tariq Khamisa Foundation (TKF) is an educational organization dedicated to the goal of creating safer schools and communities. Thanks to the support of OCF and its members, TKF’s character-building programs will teach children in Oceanside the restorative principles of accountability, empathy, compassion, forgiveness, and peacemaking, to set them on a firm path towards opportunity.
With roots in San Diego, CA TKF has now begun a national expansion of its Safe School Model with sites in Pennsylvania and Colorado and plans for further expansion throughout the country.
Preparations are under way for the development of the TKF Training Institute for Peace and Forgiveness with an emphasis on expanded training of educators, parents, and students. These plans will expand TKF’s mission exponentially.
TKF was founded in 1995 following the senseless murder of 20-year-old Tariq Khamisa, by 14-year old Tony Hicks. Recognizing victims on both sides of the gun, the families came together in the spirit of healing to launch TKF. In compassion and true restorative justice, TKF worked tirelessly to secure Hicks’ release from prison in 2019. TKF is a true testament of the healing power of forgiveness as a catalyst for humanity’s greater good.
