My Brother's Keeper Alliance

Through COVID relief distribution in partnership with the city, RYSE and partners raised more than $1.4 million in  funds earmarked for direct disbursements to young people and families.  With community and government leaders from the City of Richmond, the RYSE Center, The West Contra Costa Public Education Fund, Richmond Promise, and Building Blocks for Kids, The Richmond Rapid Response Fund (R3F), distributed $500 direct payments to almost 800 individuals and families. A percentage of funds have been allocated to young people and families who are directly impacted by lethal injury.  RYSE and The Office of Neighborhood Safety continue to coordinate supports, resources, stabilization, and sanctuary for those most structurally vulnerable and in acute distress.

The Fund will continue to address COVID-19 and also go beyond to address economic recovery and security, food and essential supplies, housing and homelessness, health and healing, and education and learning more broadly.  Under the banner of the West Contra Costa COVID Community Care Coalition, RYSE convenes up to 100 County, city, public health, and social service providers to coordinate and advance collaboration and improve service delivery to youth and target populations.  Over 600 adult stakeholders have attended a four part Racial Reckoning series. 95 percent of participants say that through participating in RYSE they have a better understanding of self and their relationship to community.

Meanwhile, RYSE youth demanded radical change that led to the creation of the Contra County Office of Racial Equity and Social Justice where community organizations sit on the planning committee and youth are centered in the listening sessions to develop its mission and scope.

Through RYSE, young people are collaborating with the Office of Neighborhood Safety to set guiding principles that affirm youth.  They are teaching teachers in the school district how to create trauma informed healing space or how to creatively integrate math and arts together.  They moved the school district to change public comment to the beginning of Board meetings to prioritize youth participation instead of at the end where it was often cut short for time.  And soon, they will be gathering in their own state-of-the-art Ryse Commons facility to house the work to come.

As they make strides, they also caution that programmatic work without systems change is ‘addressing the cough without addressing the sickness.’ They warn that such efforts can do damage if they selectively create hope without the systems change that would justify it.