Dear Beloved Community,
As we reflect on this past year, we are reminded that we are all healing. 2023 was a year upon years of new experiences and relationships, of joyful music and creative leadership, of profound loss and grief within our community and world, and of navigating and working to reshape the systems we live among. At RYSE, we know that healing must be at the center of all our work, especially our work to build youth power — and young people are leading the way.
Young people are trying out new avenues for cultivating healing in themselves, asking for what they need, and sharing ideas for their own futures, their schools, and their communities. They continue to shape RYSE as a space and sanctuary for healing justice* — where generational trauma and oppression are transformed as young people engage with holistic healing pathways, and build new, more inclusive practices.
This year, we are grateful to have completed the RYSE Commons campus as a new space for young people to come to after such profound, unpredictable, and isolating years.
We are also grateful that more than 700 youth members, new and old, are making their way to RYSE, and stepping into a new space in a new time. Members overwhelmingly share that they experience belonging, safety, love, and trust from RYSE staff and within the campus they have designed.
Together with young people, we are reimagining systems: leading Contra Costa’s Restorative Justice Diversion program for youth, partnering in the community-led creation of the first Contra Costa County Office of Racial Equity and Social Justice, holding youth-led arts-based healing workshops for WCCUSD teachers, and launching RYSE’s first Summer Youth Policy Institute.
Young people are reminding us that adults need to heal themselves and activate their power to influence the systems that harm BIPOC youth. Young people are asking adults to truly listen to how they understand and experience the world and to respond with intention.
We invite our RYSE community to take time this season to tend our own healing, to deeply listen to the young people in each of our lives, and to engage our power in response and reimagination.
The RYSE Youth Emergency Fund is one of our commitments to eliminate as many barriers as possible for young people to have their basic needs and rights met. Please consider contributing to our goal to raise $200,000 for the year ahead.
With gratitude,
The RYSE Staff
*Healing justice was born from the Kindred Southern Healing Justice Collective in 2007.
Continue to read below for additional RYSE highlights:
Help Us Raise $200,000 for the Youth Emergency Care Fund
Young people in Contra Costa deserve access to basic human rights – safe housing, food, and health services. The COVID pandemic and 2020 racial reckonings illuminated the barriers that stand in the way of our communities being able to thrive. It also created openings and commitments to ensure that young people in our county have their needs met.
We launched RYSE’s Youth Emergency Care Fund to provide direct and timely financial resources for young people whose basic needs are not being met or are being threatened. This includes providing emergency hotel stays, support for food, rent, healthcare, and school supplies. Since its creation in 2020, the Youth Emergency Care Fund has provided support for over 300 young people and their families.
The Youth Emergency Care Fund also supports Transitional Age Youth (TAY), youth held in legal criminal systems (and those re-entering community from those systems), youth in foster care, LGBTQ+ youth, and youth and families experiencing situations of domestic violence, intimate partner violence, or exploitation. Please consider helping us raise $200,000 for 2024 by contributing to the RYSE Youth Emergency Care Fund at www.rysecenter.org/donate.
SAVE THE DATE:
Be a Kid! Returns On April 26, 2024
Mark your calendars and save the date for our annual fundraiser: Be a Kid! returns on April 26, 2024, 6p-10p.
The “RYSE to the Future” theme embodies Black, Indigenous, and young people of color’s powerful vision: strong, healthy, united communities where equity is the norm and violence is neither desired nor required. The young people who organized to create RYSE over 15 years ago, and who designed the beautiful campus we steward today, have created the foundation for future generations to thrive. Now is the time and place for youth to lead, dream, and heal and build power.
Come see what the future holds during our 21+ event where grown ups can enjoy being a kid, and can co-create the future that young people in our community deserve. Mark your calendars and look out for ticket sales soon!
Are you a local business or organization interested in sponsoring this event? Learn more here about how your company can be featured and support young people in our community.
What Members Are Saying About Our Theory of Liberation Goals
At RYSE, we measure whether we are successful in meeting our Theory of Liberation goals through one barometer: young people's experiences with us. That includes the relationships between members and with staff, and whether young people feel safe, loved, listened to, powerful and like they belong. In May 2023, for the first time since we have been back in person in RYSE's new campus, we asked our members to share their opinions with us, and more than 80 members responded.
Learn more about what our members think about our progress, and how we’re thinking about love, safety and belonging, and changes within ourselves.
