Reflections from our CEO, Chris Helfrich
Eat. Learn. Play. CEO Chris Helfrich and co-founders Ayesha and Stephen Curry at our 2019 launch
By Chris Helfrich, CEO of Eat. Learn. Play.
It all started at the dinner table.
In late 2018, near the beginning of the Warriors’ final season playing in Oakland, Stephen and Ayesha invited me into their home to help work through some ideas they had about how to give back to a community that had given them so much. Sitting around their family’s kitchen table, they laid out a big vision: for every child in their adopted hometown of Oakland to have the support and opportunities they need to thrive.
That vision became Eat. Learn. Play.
Since 2019, we’ve been working to unlock the full potential of a generation of Oakland kids. Together, we’ve invested more than $100 million in Oakland, delivered more than 35 million meals, put over a million books into kids’ hands, provided literacy tutoring to nearly 10,000 students, and transformed 27 schoolyards.
Seven years in feels like a good moment to pause and reflect. And when I do, it isn’t the numbers that stand out most.
It’s the village.
Thousands of people who have come together around a shared belief that Oakland’s kids deserve the resources, support, joy, and opportunities to become everything they can be.
Without that village, none of this impact is possible. And it starts with Stephen and Ayesha.
They created Eat. Learn. Play. to give back to the community that welcomed them with open arms, the city where they built their family. They are the source of so much of the vision, passion, and joy behind this work. From day one, they made the extraordinary commitment to personally cover our overhead costs so that 100 percent of every dollar raised could go directly to Oakland’s kids.
But what I find most amazing is how they show up, again and again. Sometimes it’s in the smallest moments - a child proudly reading Ayesha a new favorite book at our holiday book fairs, or Stephen jumping from log to log with a class of second graders in the new nature exploration area of one of our 27 remodeled schoolyards.
Other times it’s the much bigger questions that help drive our strategies: What are Oakland’s kids up against? What do they deserve? How can we do more to help ensure access to healthy, thriving childhoods? What resources are needed to accomplish this?
Working alongside the Currys is the Eat. Learn. Play. team - the backbone of everything we do. They bring enormous heart to this work, but also discipline, creativity, persistence, and an unwillingness to accept that these problems are too hard to solve.
Our Board pushes us to think bigger, go deeper, and stay focused on where we can make the greatest difference.
Our community partners are the ones showing us, every single day, what it means to show up for Oakland’s kids. We are incredibly fortunate to work alongside Oakland Unified School District, KABOOM!, the Alameda County Community Food Bank, the Oakland Literacy Coalition, Oakland Athletic League, and so many others who know these communities deeply and have been doing great work for years.
Then there are our donors. Many have been with us since our earliest days, when the pandemic changed everything and our immediate focus became helping feed Oakland families. Dozens of brand partners and thousands of individuals, all believing in this work and in the idea that every child deserves more... and being willing to resource it so generously.
Just as important are the more than 4,000 volunteers who roll up their sleeves and help us get the work done. They’ve transformed 27 of the greatest schoolyards you’ll ever see into places where 10,000 kids are now playing, learning, and growing every day. They help students find that perfect book at our holiday book fairs, and hand out healthy meals and smiles alongside the Eat. Learn. Play. Bus. Collectively, they’ve given over 30,000 hours in support of Eat. Learn. Play., with the singular focus of creating brighter futures for Oakland’s kids.
And then there is Oakland itself. The families. The kids. The teachers. The school leaders. The neighbors. This city is the reason for all of it.
Every day, more than 35,000 students walk into Oakland public schools to eat, learn, play, make friends, discover who they are, and imagine who they might become.
They are the heart of this work.
When Stephen accepted the Muhammad Ali Sports Humanitarian Award this summer, he challenged people to “find your Oakland.”
Our village knows exactly what he meant. Oakland has given all of us at Eat. Learn. Play. something to believe in, something to fight for, and a community that continues to teach us what showing up really looks like.
Seven years in, I’m proud of how far this village has come. I'm even more aware of how much work remains. So we will keep showing up. For students. For families. For teachers. For Oakland.
We will keep building, keep listening, keep learning, and keep pushing ourselves to make the next chapter bigger than the last. It’s been a long seven years, but in so many ways, I still feel like we’re just getting started.
Thank you to everyone who is a part of this incredible village.