BY SWETA VOHRA//

Clear glass jars of red, white, black and bamboo-infused rice line the kitchen counters in the home of Caryl Levine and Kenneth Lee. Pictures of rice farms and farmers in exotic locations hang on the walls in the hallway. Books and articles on global agriculture, entrepreneurship, and rice cultivation are neatly stacked on a bookshelf and strewn across the coffee table.

These earthy images, products and colors don’t simply decorate the home; they illustrate the life that Levine and Lee follow. This quaint house on a quiet street in El Cerrito is the headquarters for Lotus Foods, Inc. Levine and Lee, co-founders of Lotus Foods, are self-proclaimed lovers of rice. But more than that, they are using their love of rice as a tool to connect Americans with small family farms in places like India, Madagascar and Bhutan.

What Levine calls, “a small company with a big mission,” Lotus Foods offers American consumers “hand-crafted,” high-quality rice from private family plots in remote areas of the world. The vision of the company is to “support sustainable global agriculture” by encouraging production of locally grown rice “enabling the small rice farmer to earn an honorable living.”

The root of Lotus Foods grew from a marketing research trip back in 1993 by Levine and Lee. Both set out to travel the world in an effort to find sound entrepreneurial ideas to implement in the United States. “We wanted to do something but we didn’t know what,” says Levine.

They came back with 90 different ideas jotted down on paper. “I still have the list,” says Levine as she points to the corner shelf.

But one of their experiences stood out among all the others says Levine. Taking a break in a rural region of China, Levine and Lee were served steaming bowls of black rice, something they had never seen before. The roasted nutty flavor of the black grains pleasantly surprised them and provoked Levine and Lee to ask about the rice. The locals explained this black staple was well known for increasing blood circulation and longevity and therefore was served only to the Emperor for many centuries. “Ken had the perfect name right then and there – the Forbidden Rice,” says Levine.

The taste, the nutritional value and the compelling story behind this black rice planted the idea of selling traditional, hand-grown rice to Americans, a market that they believed was still untapped at the time. After spending months researching the rice market as well as some of other business ideas, Levine and Lee decided to undertake this nascent plan and grow it into a business. The “Forbidden Rice,” as it is still called today, was the first on the list of products.

But the challenges were great. “It’s all about relationships,” explains Levine, “ and we were innovators in this market so nobody knew what we were.”

The first relationship to cultivate was between the company and the local growers. Lee spent months traveling to and from remote areas in India, Nepal, Bhutan and parts of Africa visiting with farmers and understanding the methodology used for the grain production. He would seek out non-profits that already worked in many of these regions and explain the business concept of Lotus Foods. Slowly, by establishing trust, farmers started to supply rice to the Lotus food line – Kalijira rice from Bengal, black rice from China and Carnaroli rice from the Andes.

Besides building partnerships, the locals also had to be trained on the proper preparation, sorting, and cleaning of the crop. Most of these farmers were accustomed to selling only in their local markets where cleanliness and sorting are much less emphasized compared to American markets. By teaming up with local non-profits and other agricultural organizations in these regions, Lotus Foods was able to teach growers the methods of rice production for the global market.

The company also had to forge bonds with their American consumers. “We had to educate the market on why [our rice] was better,” says Levine.

The first target market was the “upscale foodies” and “white tablecloth restaurants” which they knew always look for new additions to their menu that look attractive on plates. The Lotus rice products were pitched as having cooking quality – they cook in less than 30 minutes, tasting better, and carrying high nutritional value. Then Levine and Lee targeted specialty food stores like Williams-Sonoma, followed by natural food stores like Whole Foods and eventually grocery stores like Safeway. Today, Lotus Foods has about one million dollars in sales annually around the country.

As a result of paying premium prices and high costs of shipping, Lotus Food products are pricier than the traditional commodity rice, says Levine. But she says with the nutritional quality, consumers will “save on doctor’s bills in the future,” and feels that spending a little more on high-quality rice is justified. Plus, it is indirectly in support of family farms across the world.

Levine relates a story from 1994 when they had met with the minister of agriculture in Bhutan. At that time, Bhutanese exclusively grew red rice, a huge part of the local diet. However, since there was no lucrative market for the staple crop, the minister was considering importing rice from India and getting rid of several of the farms. The locals were resistant. When Lotus Foods offered them a global outlet, Bhutan was able to sustain its long tradition of growing red rice. “We kept the bio-diversity alive,” says Levine, and today, the Bhutanese red rice is the country’s only export to the US.

“It’s a win-win situation,” says Levine. “We feel good about our work.”

Levine and Lee had no idea 15 years ago that this is the work they would be doing. In fact, living in El Cerrito was completely by chance and maybe a little luck. Levine was teaching music at the University of Hartford and was offered a job at UC Berkeley. Knowing nothing about the Bay Area, Levine relied on her cousin who lived in the East Bay to find a place for her and Lee. Levin’s cousin found a house in El Cerrito that was being sold by a friend and told Levine to call about it immediately.

“I had no idea where El Cerrito was, but I knew I needed a place to live. And my cousin loved the house,” says Levine. She called the owner from somewhere in Wisconsin on her cross-country drive to the West Coast, and bought the house.

A decision made on the whim turned out to be beneficial in the long run. Besides falling in love with the city, Levine says the location of El Cerrito for Lotus Foods is fateful. With such natural and specialty food stores like El Cerrito Natural Grocery, Berkeley Bowl and Whole Foods nearby, there are not only numerous outlets for their rice but also a lot of local support.

With this support and their established relationships, Lotus Foods is now taking a new step forward in their business. A new method of rice farming called System of Rice Intensification, pioneered by a Cornell professor, is transforming the way rice is being grown worldwide. According to a New York Times article in July, this new system requires less water and produces a higher yield of crops. Cornell University contacted Lotus Foods to offer an international market to farms that have implemented this new system.

“This is an opportunity to revolutionize the way rice is grown,” says Levine. She and Lee jumped at the chance and are currently in the works with Cornell and its partners in this new endeavor.

Meanwhile, the rest of the Lotus Food rice products are going strong in local and national markets. The clear jars that line the counters in Levine’s kitchen are for the rice lovers in them, and they are also the display of Lotus Food’s product line – brown rice from Bengal, red rice from Bhutan, black rice from China.

But whether it’s black or brown, there’s one thing that Levine can guarantee when they pick their rice for Lotus: “It’s gotta taste great.” And they can assure you that they do.

BY ALEXIA UNDERWOOD //

The olive oil shipment is late.

At 10 a.m., a single volunteer, Henry Norr, arrives on a beat-up red bicycle and waits outside the headquarters of the International Solidarity Movement Support Group (ISM) in Berkeley.   A sign identifying the building as “The Grassroots House” hangs outside.  There is some trash strewn about the yard.

Norr wears a bright magenta shirt and suspenders. A former San Francisco Chronicle business reporter, Norr has visited Palestine three times with ISM. After he returned in 2002, he attended anti-war rallies and gave an informal talk on his experiences in the Middle East.  “I’d had this regular weekly column for four years by then,” he says.“I wrote about the Intel plant in Israel, and the pro-Israel lobby had a fit about it. I checked it multiple times, and they never found a syllable that was inaccurate.”

While Norr talks, he stares into the distance. After all of this, he says, he was given the cold shoulder and eventually fired from the Chronicle for taking a day off of work to attend the anti-war demonstrations in San Francisco in 2002.  He still receives a pension from the company.

Slowly, volunteers’ cars arrive, each transporting boxes of soap, olive oil bottles and zaatar – a Middle Eastern spice mixture. The unmistakable earthy smell of extra-virgin olive oil wafts out of trunks and minivans – a thick, clean fragrance from the other side of the world. The olive oil will be stored in the basement until ISM’s next bottling party, planned for December. Then it will be sold at events, and to individual purchasers in the Bay Area.

Norr and the other volunteers are members of ISM, a human rights group dedicated to helping Palestinians by dispatching volunteers to Palestine for months or years at a time. The volunteers serve as international human rights observers, walking children to and from school and staying in homes slated for demolition. The chapter in El Cerrito, among other things, sells and bottles Palestinian olive oil from farmers to help finance their volunteers.

As Katie, another ISM volunteer, carries her fourth box to the porch, she talks about her last three years in Palestine and the time she spent living in a Jewish Kibbutz. “I was burned out on the violence,” she says of her years in Palestine. She is still active with the organization, but has plans now to attend graduate school in graphic design in San Francisco.

The Northern California Chapter of ISM officially operates out of Paul Larudee’s home in the hills above El Cerrito, “for mailing purposes,” he tells me, even though the meetings take place in Berkeley.

Crammed inside his small apartment is a large piano covered with stacks of papers and boxes. Larudee hands me three cards, one of which reads “Sharpe and Flatte Piano Service” – he is a local piano technician as well as a human rights activist. Larudee’s living room walls display framed pictures of Arabic calligraphy. The script is ornate and mesmerizing. A nativity scene with a baby doll sits amidst the clutter on the hearth.

Betty, Larudee’s Lebanese wife, trails after their small black dog as he darts between boxes and tables. Betty Larudee and her husband met at a beach while he was living in Lebanon several years ago. She offers me jasmine tea or Turkish coffee. “Come on,” says Larudee, his eyes merry. “When’s the last time you had a cup of real Turkish coffee?”

Larudee’s connection to the Middle East runs deeper than coffee or pictures on a wall, I soon find out. The son of an Iranian Presbyterian minister, Larudee received his Ph.D in linguistics from Georgetown University and has worked as a contracted U.S. government advisor and Fulbright lecturer, and has spent 14 years in Arab countries. He became involved with Palestinian human rights issues “43 or 44 years ago,” but co-founded the Northern California chapter of ISM in 2002, after traveling to Palestine with four other Bay Area natives.

Larudee speaks carefully, pronouncing each syllable in a way that brings to mind his linguistic background.

He describes ISM as a human rights group, but also “kind of like a civil rights movement.” ISM was originally formed back in 2001. Before that, he says, “there was…a Palestinian non-violent resistance movement, but it wasn’t getting any press and it was being suppressed very heavily by Israeli forces.”

People connected with the movement suggested adding foreigners to the non-violent resistance movement, hoping that “it might have the same effect in Palestine that the white freedom riders had in the segregated south. It might be less subject to oppression.”

This suggestion turned into ISM, which has several chapters around the world, including one in Palestine. The Northern California chapter raises funds by selling and bottling Palestinian olive oil, like the recent shipment that arrived in Berkeley.

“One of the big activities that we’re known for is olive oil bottling,” Larudee says. “We set up assembly lines and you have the smell of the olive oil just permeating the place and we have food and music. It’s a real party atmosphere but it’s also very efficient. In the space of four hours we’ll bottle 60 cases of oil.”

ISM also organizes local speaking engagements and shows films. Once a year they hold a Rachel Corrie memorial event, to commemorate the memory of an American ISM activist killed in Israel.

The meetings are usually attended by people from all over the Bay Area, including business people, real-estate agents and students.

While Larudee, an El Cerrito resident since 1976, spends much of his time working for ISM and Free Gaza, another non-profit he co-founded in 2006, he describes his piano technician business as relaxing. “It’s almost like therapy,” he says. Despite a few negative reactions from clients, Larudee’s strong yen towards activism has appealed to others. Some have even requested to buy the olive oil that his organization produces, and donated to ISM.

Back at the Grassroots House, the volunteers take a break from unloading their precious cargo. Inside the large, sprawling house the rooms are decorated with posters representing the other non-profits that share this space, like the Prisoners Literature Project and Berkeley Copwatch.

The boxes, some leaking oil onto scraps of newspaper, will be stored in the basement under the house until next month’s bottling party. The brand name ISM has chosen – “Houriya” – means freedom in Arabic.

Ordering his chai tea latte in the El Cerrito Barnes and Nobles, Nabeel Awan sports a pair of sweatpants and a hoodie as he checks text messages on his phone from his friends. On this rainy Saturday evening, Awan could be mistaken for any other typical American single 27-year old man relaxing on a weekend.

But the texts that he exchanges are not about the night’s parties, girls or the next NFL football game. Instead, Awan and his Pakistani friends are talking about the great non-American pastime. They are furiously commenting on the day’s heated cricket tournament played in Fremont. Awan, captain of his team, explains that their opponents had to forfeit because of late players but still forced Awan’s team to play a match.

Playing cricket for Awan and his Pakistani teammates is like breathing. “You can’t grow up in Pakistan or India without playing the game daily,” says Awan. Once he migrated here, Awan, like many other young South Asian men, found existing cricket leagues based in Fremont. Every Saturday there are matches, which bring Pakistani and Indian from all corners of the Bay Area, from Richmond to Hayward to San Jose. For Awan, every Saturday is a taste of his home country.

Seven years ago, a month after September 11, 2001, Awan landed in America for the first time at San Francisco International Airport. And he braced himself for the worst. Before traveling to America, a long-time friend from Pakistan who lived in New York tried to convince Awan to stay home. He warned that the mood of America had become increasingly anti-Muslim. In fact, Awan’s friend had quit his job and planned to return to Pakistan.

But coming to America was Awan’s destiny. “We always knew we would come here,” says Awan as he reflects back on how his family made it all the way from Karachi, Pakistan to El Cerrito, California.

The Awan family spent several years in the late 1980s in Dubai seeking work. But when job offers looked bleak, Awan’s father called upon a friend already working in the East Bay in hopes of better opportunities. With a position secure through his friend, Awan’s father left for America in 1990. Without any family support in Dubai, Awan’s mother and his older brother and younger sister packed up everything they had and moved back to Karachi, where his mother’s family lived.

For the next 11 years, Awan’s father worked as a manager of a cab company here in El Cerrito, but the wages were not enough. To support the three children and herself, Awan’s mother was forced to work full-time in Karachi, an uncommon and difficult feat for a woman in Pakistan at the time. As Awan looks back he admits that he never appreciated what his mother did for them in all those years in Karachi. “We were so naughty and she had to put up with us and support us,” says Awan.

Nike. Disneyland. Video games. Those are the words Awan associated with America when he was young. As he grew older, Awan began to ponder how he would make a life and a career across the world. What kind of job would he have? What kind of friends would he make? Although this country seemed far off to Awan at the time, there was no question that he would also come here – it was just a matter of when.

That day came sometime in late 2001 when Awan’s father, with some help from friends in Pakistan, finally completed the necessary legal paperwork. Awan’s older brother went first and the rest of the family followed a few months later.

On October 10, 2001 Awan stepped out of the San Francisco Airport and readied himself. All the warnings of Muslim hatred were running over and over in his head. “I thought that everyone would stare at us and start to make faces,” says Awan.

But in fact, it was quite opposite. As his mother, sister and Awan stood on the curb with their entire Karachi life packed into six suitcases, not one person stared at them. In fact, even when Awan asked for instructions on how to hail a cab in his thick, rough English, nobody laughed, as he thought they would. Awan’s fears were quelled and he thought America could not be that bad after all.

The family moved into a one-bedroom apartment in Pinole for the next two years. Awan’s father had fallen ill and was contemplating retirement with the arrival of his sons. The first and only priority for Awan and his brother was to get jobs. Having finished an architectural degree in Karachi, Awan had thought to pursue a similar career in the States. But those hopes were quickly replaced by a necessity to find anything that paid.

Having a considerable background in computers through college courses, Awan was hired by a local Pakistani man in El Cerrito to repair them. Although skilled in computers, Awan lacked the understanding of American business. When a customer came to Awan with a small problem such as replacing a simple card, he did not ask for a payment. “I thought why should I charge for something so simple,” Awan says.

Awan lost that job quickly but soon found himself under the wing of another Pakistani businessman from Richmond who owned several restaurants in the East Bay. The owner had been in Awan’s shoes 30 years earlier so he made it a point to help young Pakistani men like Awan become successful.

Awan began working at a Richmond Wienerschnitzel, a fast food chain, and began to learn the ropes of working in the restaurant business. Awan admits to being a bit hot headed when he first started working and jumping to the defensive when people would try to correct his mistakes. “I thought why are other employees telling me what to do,” says Awan. But the owner taught him “to analyze people and situations properly before acting.” Once he did this, Awan became receptive to criticism and felt much more confident in dealing with his co-workers and customers.

During this time, the Awan family moved from Pinole to El Cerrito in 2003. While low crime rate and quality real estate were attractions for the Awan family, the location was the biggest pull. Berkeley holds one of the largest Pakistani populations in the Bay Area. Solano Avenue in Albany houses an Islamic Community Center and a mosque stands in Richmond. El Cerrito brought the Awan family closer to bits of home.

Today, as Awan comfortably sips his latte, all those years of pondering in Pakistan seem far off. Awan found the answers to his own questions of what he could make of his life and career in this country. He now manages the Richmond Wienerschnitizel restaurant and will soon be managing an Indian restaurant in Fremont.

Awan was also able to find a sense of his own community with other young Pakistani immigrants. Besides the weekly cricket rendezvous, if Awan has a craving for Indian food, wants to discuss the latest Pakistan news headline or even curse in his native Urdu, his Pakistani friends are the first ones to call.

Ironically, while Awan enjoys embracing his culture in this new adopted country, his future plans do not include returning to his home country. “It’s too different now. And I just love the Bay Area,” says Awan. He wants of life what most anybody does: a good job and a good home, and he wants to make it happen in the Bay Area.

Faces in Focus is a series of profiles on local businesses and residents who are making an impact in El Cerrito.

Student kayak trip to Angel Island.

BY SWETA VOHRA //

El Cerrito residents may soon have a new neighbor. The Living Skills Center for the Visually Impaired, currently located in San Pablo, is considering moving to the city of El Cerrito in order to provide a higher quality of life for its students.

“El Cerrito is a community on the move,” says the center’s director Patricia Williams, who has been involved with the organization for 36 years.

A former instructor, Williams says that she’s wanted to build a new site since she became director in 1995. For over a year now, the organization has focused on El Cerrito because of its central location plus its safe and friendly community.

On Sept. 15 the El Cerrito City Council voted for a mixed-use project on Portola Drive between San Pablo and the Ohlone Greenway. This project, managed by Resources for Community Development, a non-profit affordable housing development company, would combine the Living Skills Center with 57 affordable rental apartments, according to the organization’s proposal.

El Cerrito officials chose the Living Skills Center’s project over another proposal from Satellite Housing, Inc., which would have catered to a developmentally disabled population. That proposal would have built affordable housing at the Connor’s Doors site on 10919 San Pablo Avenue.

The city council approved a $100,000 loan to Resources for Community Development to assist the organization with predevelopment expenses. Both Resources for Community Development and Living Skills Center must work on securing funds, as well as final approvals from the City Council and Planning Commission, before they can begin projected construction in October 2010.

According to Williams, partnering with an affordable housing developer allows Living Skills Center to provide the best quality of life to its students, while the major task of maintenance will be left to Resources for Community Development.

For Living Skills Center, the joint agreement means, “still having part ownership and some control over accessibility issues, safety, and student rents,” according to the organization’s proposal.

Living Skills Center was founded by Dr. Philip Hatlen in 1972 to assist blind youth in their transition from home into the outer communities. It was his vision to form a program where students live by their own means to learn independence. Classes like cooking, adaptive technology, cane travel skills and Braille fill up each student’s day so at the end of their year-long stay, the students can handle daily tasks with little assistance.

Currently, the organization operates out of a complex in San Pablo where it rents nine apartments to house its 18 students, who come from around the country.

According to the organization, 87 percent of students “move on to live independent, fulfilling lives.”

Now, after 36 years, Williams says that the organization needs a change and more importantly, its own property in order to have more control over the quality and maintenance of the services it provides to its students.

The site on Portola drive is ideal, says Williams, because it’s “tucked away a little,” but still has access to two BART stations as well as Safeway and Longs Pharmacy.

Williams says she will go door-to-door to meet her El Cerrito neighbors if the city council gives final approval for their move. She says the Living Skills Center “will make a concerted effort to be good community citizens.”

If all goes well, Living Skills Center will move into to their new home in January 2012.

BY MATT DURNING //

The evangelical church community is widely regarded as one of America’s most powerful and reliable voting blocks. Over the past two presidential elections, they have played an integral role in the election and re-election of George W. Bush. In November 2004, Bush won 78 percent of evangelical voters nationally.

This year, however, opinion research has shown a shift in support among young evangelicals away from the Republican candidate, John McCain,and toward Barack Obama.

According to a September 2008 survey conducted for PBS’s Religion & Ethics NewsWeekly by Greenberg Quinlan Rosner Research Inc, McCain currently has the support of 71 percent of white evangelicals, but only 62 percent of young white evangelicals between the ages of 18 and 29.

Perhaps more significant, the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life found that while a majority of young white evangelicals describe themselves as conservative on social issues, slightly more identified this year as either independents or Democrats than as Republicans.

Recently, El Cerrito Focus reporter Matt Durning visited the Trinity Evangelical Free Church in El Cerrito to find out how young evangelicals in your community are feeling about the upcoming election. The result? A wide diversity of opinion on everything from same-sex marriage to Sarah Palin to U.S. foreign policy.

Click below to hear audio interviews with five of Trinity’s young evangelical members and their pastor.

AKI SUGAWARA, 29

REBECCA OLSON, 26

DEAN SAMUELS, 30

DARRELL OLSON, 30

DARIUS BARNES, 25

TOM JOHNSTON, PASTOR

BY DANIEL MCGLYNN//

An ordinary Sunday night outside of the Cerrito Theater briefly turned into a mobile art gallery. The Art Car Festival rolled into town and made a planned stop in front of the theater in order to catch the premiere screening of Harrod Blank‘s film Automorphosis.

Blank, a local filmmaker and art car creator, has been traveling the country and documenting art cars for the past 15 years. Many viewers in the audience were also in the film.

Blank paints the art car movement as a solution to the homogeneous freeway scene. We are “conditioned with imagery and messages that we should think a certain way,” said Blank prior to the screening.

He and some of the two dozen art car makers that were part of the festival use their cars as a canvas to convey a variety of messages. Most of the cars have a theme, some political, some historic or some holiday and then some are simply unique. All offer a creative alternative to your normal Civic or Camry, like the Volkswagen turned flame-spewing-armor-clad-snail. Check them out for yourself and don’t forget to let us know our thoughts.

Watch a video of some of the art car artists and check out the cars in the curbside slideshow.

The Farmer’s Market in the El Cerrito Plaza is a cornucopia of sound, color and fragrance.  Watch this video to get a taste and then experience it for yourself, every Tuesday and Saturday, from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m.