On the Richmond landscape since 2008, the RYSE Youth Center is a place where integral parts of a hurting and glorious city come to shed conflict so that they may seek and create solutions.
Over the past 3 years, RYSE deepened its roots and raised its vision through expansion of the physical space. Moving from 6,600 square feet to 45,000 square feet, grown from RYSE’s healing-centered and creativity-led foundation, RYSE Commons fully opened to young people in Summer 2022. The activation of the RYSE Health Justice Center began in Summer 2023 and we are near completion of the RYSE Village, a youth-designed healing, performance, teaching and gathering space.
Current tenant partners are The Hidden Genius Project and Young Women's Freedom Center. We are also partnered with Asian Pacific Environmental Network in the design of RYSE Commons as a Resilience and Liberation Hub to address climate, political and other crises, and with a Health and Healing Justice Partner Roundtable to inform the Health Justice Center sustainability strategy. As part of young people’s vision for systems transformation, RYSE convenes The Contra Costa County Care Coalition (C5), and has played a pivotal role in collaborating with the County Board of Supervisors to establish an Office of Racial Equity and Social Justice (ORESJ) in Contra Costa County.
RYSE is deepening, expanding and continuing to articulate and respond to young peoples’ needs with the facilities, resources, and community we’ve accumulated over the years, but
It wasn’t always this way.
In the early 2000s, the youth of Richmond were in a predicament. Before RYSE, back when the city—in particular this generation of young people—was suffering through what seemed to be a persistent stream of homicides, back in that beginning, before an engaged youth voice was chiseled into civic life, before anyone set forth to rethink young people’s place in the city, before all of that, there in the open corners of Richmond were its youth. And the youth wanted safety and insisted on being heard.
In those days, Kimberly Aceves’ work in Richmond was as Executive Director of Youth Together, an intellectual clearinghouse of youth activism emanating out from the heart of Oakland. As violence piqued in Richmond, Kimberly wasn’t the only person taking note. The youth were moving.
Kimberly speaking at the RYSE Grand Opening in 2008
In support of youth organizers, Kimberly, along with co-founder Kanwarpal Dhaliwal and adult allies like County Supervisor John Gioia, began working to address the emotional, mental, and political health of local youth in site-specific, innovative ways.
It took a team to build the Center from the ground up and to sow seeds toward sustainability. It took the team, the city, a small squad of investors, and a staff dedicated to seeing out a vision developed and set by young people. It took years of risks, trials, errors, and successes to get where we are today.
Our journey has been a long one, but we are just getting started.
Meet our staff
We share a passion for social justice and working in partnership with young people of color. Learn more >>>