These are some of NFOCA’s current projects. We invite anyone who lives, works, or studies in North Fair Oaks to participate. Scroll down to learn about NFOCA’s past projects.
Water Well Station
Block Action Team (BAT)
Trees On Middlefield Road
DIY Air Purifiers
Illegal Dumping
Climate Ready North Fair Oaks
NFO Businesses
Propose Your Improvement Project
Previous Projects
Proyecto Mil Mascaras / Project One Thousand Masks: In 2020 and 2021 we provided free face masks throughout North Fair Oaks to promote safety and reduce the risk of COVID-19 infections among residents. Our face masks were commissioned to Ana Juarez, a local seamstress and resident of North Fair Oaks, who not only sewed our face masks, but she also helped us to obtain a large donation of commercially-made face masks. For photos, please visit our Facebook page. We teamed up with local businesses, daycare centers and schools to distribute our free facemasks. All combined, we provided a total of 2,985 reusable face masks in addition to many single-use face masks to the North Fair Oaks community.
Tree Planting and Reforestation in North Fair Oaks: We undertook a reforestation effort and planted around 260 free trees for North Fair Oaks residents in collaboration with a few partners from the Climate Ready North Fair Oaks, which is a coalition we have formed to study and act against the effects of climate change in our community. The trees were free and the nonprofit Canopy provided, planted, and cared for the trees for free for the first three years. Our efforts emphasized reforestation on the Redwood City side of North Fair Oaks because it disproportionately lacks trees. We had three major planting events in North Fair Oaks in Spring of 2020, in March of 2021, and again in the Spring of 2022. We hope that additional funding can be secured so that we may continue planting more trees in North Fair Oaks in the future.
Bicycle Lanes and Pedestrian Walkways: We have been actively promoting the implementation of bicycle lanes and pedestrian safety throughout North Fair Oaks and will continue to do so. Most of our board members have been advocating and actively participating in planning with the San Mateo County Planning and Building, with Public Works, and with the Office of Sustainability to make this happen. While progress is slow, our advocacy has pushed for the first bike lane along 5th Ave. And the Middlefield Road Redesign project is also an accomplishment of such collaborations on this project.
Curriculum on the Environment for Youth: Members of NFOCA organized the very first collaboration among community based organizations that reside in North Fair Oaks, including El Concilio of San Mateo County, the Siena Youth Center, the NFO Council and the Stanford Future Bay Initiative. One of the successes was implementing a new curriculum around the environment, teaching the youth from the Siena Youth Center about the effects that climate change can have in their communities and on their families.
Identification of Clean Air/ Cooling Centers in NFO: As part of this project, we collaborated with student Ryan Treves in the context of his Earth Systems honors thesis at Stanford University to identify spaces that could serve as community clean air/cooling centers during days with bad air quality and other emergencies. We conducted interviews with NFO community members to gather opinions and ideas about clean air/cooling centers in NFO. The result of this project was published as a scientific article titled “Wildfire Smoke Clean Air Centers: Identifying Barriers and Opportunities for Improvement from California Practitioner and Community Perspectives.” It included the authors Ryan J. Trevesa, Emily Liu, Stephanie L. Fischer, Ever Rodriguez, Gabrielle Wong-Parodi, and it was published on August 30, 2002 in the peer-reviewed journal Society & Natural Resources – An International Journal.
Aspirational Projects
Creation of a Cultural Center: We want to organize and attain a physical space that can work as a Cultural Center for the entire community of North Fair Oaks. While this may be a seemingly difficult challenge -considering the scarcity and costs of land and buildings- our organization wants to explore every alternative possible so that our community can have a space for arts and culture, classes and art practice and teaching, as well as exhibitions from local artists. Society and culture can hardly exist if there is not a central place for people to congregate and make art happen.
North Fair Oaks Historical Archive: We hope to establish our community’s first historical archive to harvest and preserve anything and everything documenting the history of North Fair Oaks, its organizations, its businesses and its people.