The Power of the Unseen

September’s newsletter focused on the issue of food insecurity in San Francisco’s Tenderloin. In it, we mentioned three programs—Farm to Kitchen Table, the From My Heart Cooking Club and Family Nights Together—being proposed by residents to help make affordable food more available in the Tenderloin. The funding for each of these programs will be decided by Tenderloin residents at a community assembly January 10-11, 2026.

In the meantime, we are pleased to announce that we have partnered with San Francisco-based FOOD Friends to help support one of those projects. FOOD Friends was founded in April of 2022 with a clear and compassionate mission: to combat food insecurity and provide nutritious, home-cooked meals to families in need across San Francisco.

As we mark this success, it coincides with the production of a video where we dive deeper into the importance of food in the Chinese culture and the existence of a flow funding circle in the Tenderloin. The 8-minute video features interviews with Malcom Yeung of the Chinatown Community Development Corp, Todd Breyfogle of the Aspen Institute, Lisa Spinali of Spinali Consulting and Hanmin Liu of Wildflowers Institute. The story opens with a brief history of Chinese immigration in San Francisco, explores the importance of food as a central and unifying element in the Chinese culture, and highlights the power of community elders as effective activists. In the words of Malcom Yeung, “Seniors are the most powerful activists… because where they are in life motivates them to seek community.”

These insights illuminate a core tenant of our process which is that discovering the unseen treasures in communities (and supporting them) is key to community sustainability. In this case, a group of elders have spearheaded food-based initiatives by forming their own flow funding circle. This transformative and democratized approach to philanthropy allows for funding to be adapted based on community need rather than bending the community to the funding. And although this particular community is one small example, a “microcosm” as Breyfogle points out, the methodology and impact of ground-up initiatives like this are very effective.

The process of creating this video was a process of discovery in allowing us to hold a mirror up to our own approaches and to the Tenderloin community. This further highlighted one set of key community assets in the elderly. Their virtue and wisdom informed the three programs mentioned above. The whole experience has been yet another opportunity for Wildflowers Institute to learn about how our strategies can positively impact the communities we serve. The video will be distributed via a future newsletter in the coming months.

Since 1998, Wildflowers Institute has worked with more than 19 communities in the United States and abroad to enable them to discover the unseen resources within, guiding them toward maintaining time-honored practices-like strong relationships and social formations-to foster healing and sustainability and proper transformation.