Mission
To tend to the sacredness of children and one another by co-creating a parent supported, safe, child-led, and playful environment where we gather weekly. We believe that children deserve respect, trust, love, and freedom. When adults partner with instead of power over children this fosters self-determination and empowerment. Empowered children are the roots of a safer and just world.
Values
Empower Oceanside is a safe, anti-racist, inclusive space for people of all races, ethnicities, ages, abilities, sexualities, and genders. We encourage and support people’s varied forms of self-expression.
We will not tolerate racism, sexism, ageism, hate, bigotry, homophobia, transphobia, persistent ignorance, or performative allyship. These core values are non-negotiable but if we feel your heart is in the right place, we will not cancel you, rather we will call you in for learning, harm reduction, and ways to meaningfully apologize.
Vision
Our goal is to be an intentional family cooperative that functions on a guerilla-style system of organizing, mutual aid, and gift economics to create a physical and emotional space for Oceanside and San Diego communities, where children and their caregivers can thrive.
Hi, welcome.
I'm Ana Maria, a bicultural, biracial, bilingual Colombian American woman. I am a daughter, an organizer, a sister, a friend, a wife and partner, and a mother. I am passionate about education, social justice, liberation, anti-oppression work, and coffee.
I am a former public elementary school teacher that survived a traumatic birth with my oldest that caused my life to pivot from working mother to stay-at-home mother.
Mothering filled me with questions and in seeking the answers I followed a path to unschooling and self-directed education. It is with Empower Oceanside that I seek to transfer my singular journey for self-directed education into building community in Oceanside particularly and San Diego in general.
For more about me and my philosophies, please check out my Empower Oceanside blog.
Empower families today.
We learn and unlearn how to respect and foster a child's autonomy while respecting our own, while also taking into account the interconnections of our environment: our family, our community, and nature.