What is 7YOC?
Seven Years of Change is a community economic self-determination platform. It helps people get stable, earn, build, and lead - over seven years - through seven-person teams, three pillars (Nutrition, Housing, Transportation), and community-anchored institutions designed around people and place rather than shareholders or extraction.
Why now?
Because waiting has cost too much. Households are being squeezed by debt above the 10% line, by rising costs across food, housing, transportation, energy, and care, by public systems that have weakened, and by political conditions that ask people to absorb harm without recourse. 7YOC exists to organize a structural response at the scale of the harm.
What's the core idea?
Seven-person teams, women-led, doing real work in their own neighborhoods. Three pillars they build through: Nutrition Hubs, Housing, Transportation. One line that marks the harm: debt above 10% is community harm and goes in the Community Usury Ledger. One door that keeps the platform permanent: $5 a month.
How do people enter?
• One person.
• One household.
• One seven-person team.
• One block.
• One neighborhood.
• One pillar at a time.
What is a 7YOC team?
A 7YOC team is a working group of seven people, women-led, organized around a real task in one of the three pillars. Teams feed people, move people, teach people, repair homes, document harm, support elders, protect children, and stand up local businesses owned and run by the community.
What is the founding circle?
The founding circle is the first seven seats that lead the platform's three pillars and the cross-cutting work: Community Finance, Nutrition Hub, Housing & Land Trust, Transportation, Youth Corps, Communications & House Voice, Operations & Team Architect. All seven are women-led. The founding circle decides when and how men are invited into leadership positions, once evidence of changed and improved lives and planet is in hand.
What is the $5 door?
The $5 door is the monthly entry point — and the durable backstop that makes the platform permanent. It is not the primary launch funding. The funding stack runs in order: grants, donations, and unencumbered gifts first; reparations one-time primer second (window opens July 1, 2026); $5 community door third, as the permanent backstop that keeps the platform community-owned over time.
What happens first?
First, we recruit the founding circle. Then we stand up the first teams in Phoenix and the Bay Area. Then we open the Community Usury Ledger intake form on July 1. Then we publish the July 1 call-to-action document with legal counsel. Then we document what works, in plain language, and we repeat it.
What is the next step?
If you are reading this and you want to talk, write to us. The Help Build This page lists the open roles and the contact path. If you are in Phoenix or the Bay Area in the next thirty days and want to meet in person, say so in your message and that thread gets prioritized.