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>View discussions about this entry País: United States
Organization: Roca, Inc.
Year the initative began (yyyy) 1988
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Positioning in the Mosaic of solutions
Describe your program or new idea in one sentence. Roca has innovated programming for very high-risk young people by implementing a stages of change program model in a non-clincial and non-mandating community setting.
What makes your initiative uniquely positioned to create change in your community? Roca is one of the only organizations of its kind to define the phases of relationship development with very high-risk young people and to identify how to move these youth through stages of change. Roca is relentlessly dedicated to young people, re-engaging them after multiple failures, teaching them to learn from mistakes, and to experientially create success. By working through the stages of change, Roca has transitioned a proven clinical model into our most disenfranchised communities.
Roca has created a staff coaching model, enabling others to utilize our learning in engagement, intensive relationship-building, and development with high-risk youth. This is supported by a unique transitional employment model, helping young people with virtually no job skills learn and practice the skills they need to get and keep a job. Concurrently, Roca works with all the major institutions that affect poor, urban youth’s lives – criminal justice, child welfare, education, health, government, public health, etc. – resulting in a range of informal and formal procedure, practice, policy, and systemic change. Describe how you organize and carry out your work? Demonstrating that ALL young people can achieve positive change, Roca combines relentless street outreach and relationship building with activities/programs, including transitional employment, designed to meet youth where they are.
Roca Youth Workers, often drawn from the communities Roca serves, are trained to recognize and work with the stages of change. High-risk young people will fail, relapse, and be avoidant of change. Understanding this, Youth Workers consistently engage young people, maintaining relationships, building trust, and continuing to re-engage them, until they maintain success. What is your plan to scale and expand your innovation into your community and beyond? Over the next five years, Roca’s model will be proven as strategy for engaging very high-risk and disengaged young people, ages 14 – 24, and moving them towards positive outcomes. Nationally, Roca will be the only community-based, non-mandating organization with a demonstrated evidence-based model for working with this population.
Results will include a 41% increase in young people served in transformational relationships, and 120% increase of youth in transitional employment slots. Roca is working with the Massachusetts Executive Office of Public Safety to develop a pilot project to implement a transitional employment program based on the stages of change – designed to serve 800 very high-risk young people across the state over three years. Roca is currently designing methodology to bring our stages of changes model for high-risk young people, outcome system, and engaged institutions strategy to scale both locally and nationally. To do this, Roca is planning a feasibility study, which will be used to determine Roca’s most appropriate implementation methodology and partners. What other resources, institutional, or policy needs would be necessary to help sustain and scale up your idea? Roca is ideally positioned to achieve its scale and growth goals, through staff capacity building and the formalization and documentation of its programming and staffing processes. Roca has also developed a significant amount of interest in its programming and data tracking processes, from both local organizations, like the Department of Youth Services, and agencies across the country.
Now, Roca must develop appropriate organizational structures and partnerships to share these lessons on a larger level. In addition, Roca must expand its internal evaluation capacity to ensure continuous quality improvement and is partnering with the Crime and Justice Institute to conduct and independent evaluation of Roca’s processes and outcomes. There are several policy changes, which, while not necessary, would also make this expansion easier, including changes in the areas of the creation of a framework of intervention, transitional employment and restorative justice. Describe your impact in one sentence, commenting on both the individual and community levels. Every high-risk young person can lead positive change in their own lives when offered relentless support and opportunity, creating safer communities and hope.
What impact has your work achieved to date? Failing to meet the needs of high-risk youth results in a growing burden on public safety, our communities and the economy. Whether looking at Boston, Los Angeles, El Salvador or Iraq, the outcome is the same: unattended and unemployed youth are becoming increasingly dangerous.
Emerging as a national model, Roca’s impact can be seen throughout its programming. For example, in FY’07, Roca worked with 658 very high-risk disengaged youth, effectively engaging 77% of them through transformational relationships. Similarly, of a targeted cohort of disengaged street, court and gang involved young people, who previously were not participating in any organized activities: 100% enrolled in alternative education or engagement programming; 85% received court assistance; and 80% were engaged in transitional employment. Roca’s work is also extremely cost-effective, investing an average of $4,880 per young person as compared with the alternative costs to the community, estimated by the Journal of Criminology to be between $250,000 and $2,000,000 in social and incarceration support over his/her lifetime.
What measure do you use to gauge your impact and why? Roca is committed to rigor in outcomes, continuous learning from best practices, and excellence in our programming, staff development, management, and leadership. Roca's evaluation/data collection system is uniquely customized to systematically track an individual's progress and inform the effectiveness of Roca’s model in moving young people toward the outcomes of self sufficiency and being out of harm’s way. The system examines not only Roca’s internal processes but also outcomes for participating youth, transitional employment/job placement/retention, and related benchmarks for organizational capacity and growth.
How is your initiative currently being financed and how would you finance further expansion and/or replication? In 2008-9, Roca’s 20th Anniversary Campaign will raise $20M from foundations, individuals and corporations, increasing programming, capacity, capital, and endowment funding. Roca will meet new business plan goals, show an evidence-based model, and establish itself as a sustainable organization. Over the next 5 years, Roca’s budget will go from $6.9M to $8.8M, with a $5M endowment generating a percentage of funds through interest. Earned revenues from our two social enterprises will grow annually for each program, reducing Roca’s need for private funding resources. Roca is also working with the Commonwealth to expand transitional employment services into the greater Boston area, allowing additional work crew revenues to be generated, and also working with legislators and administrators to create a statewide plan/fund for our transitional employment model.
Provide information on your current finances and organization: Roca’s budget for FY 08 is $6,400,000. Of that, an estimated 54% provides services to high-risk young men.
Roca receives $6,300,000 in annual revenues each year. Of that: 58% is support from private foundations; 32% is from governmental contracts and grants; 8% is from earned income; 0.6% is from corporate donations; and, 1.4% is from individual donations. Roca has a staff of 52 full time and 20 part time employees. Their work is supported by an estimated 82 volunteers. Who are your potential partners and allies? Roca has countless partners and allies in its program expansion, including: the Lieutenant Governor of Massachusetts; the Massachusetts Executive Office of Public Safety; the Massachusetts Departments of Youth Services, Social Services, Public Health, Labor and Workforce; the Vice-Chair of House Ways and Means St. Fleur; the Cities of Boston and Cambridge; the District Courts in Boston/Cambridge/Somerville, Suffolk County District Attorney’s Office; MassInc.; MGH Hospital; the Chelsea School District; the Crime and Justice Institute; the National Transitional Jobs Network; local unions; and, area businesses.
Who are your potential investors? Potential investors in Roca’s expansion process for its transformational relationships and transitional employment include: the W.K. Kellogg Foundation; the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation; the Edna McConnell Clark Foundation; the Harry and Jeanette Weinberg Foundation, Inc.; and, the Smith Family Foundation. Roca regularly seeks individual and corporate donations and government grants. In addition, Roca’s 20th Anniversary Fundraising Campaign will dedicate a portion of its revenues to the expansion of the Roca programming models contained in this proposal and develop new potential investors.
What is the origin of this innovation? Tell us your story. Since 1988, Roca has been deliberately serving the most disenfranchised and disengaged young people, ages 14-24, in the communities of Chelsea, Revere, East Boston, Charlestown, and Winthrop, Massachusetts. Even today, there are an estimated 8,000 young people who are not in school and unemployed in Boston and 70,000 statewide and these numbers continue to increase.
From our earliest days to the present, street, gang, and court involved young people, immigrant youth, and young parents have shown us the way to create practical solutions to community violence. Peer leaders have emerged, guiding programming, creating support, and raising funds for our building. Youth migrating from different countries continue to teach us about the larger world and their local challenges. Young people engaged with Roca have launched one of the country’s first Cambodian American HIV/AIDS Project, the Azi AIDS Project; hosted area peace summits with gang involved youth; started social enterprises, Circle Catering and the KEY project, through which young people with no work skills become job-ready and employed; run an award-winning dance group, Essencia Latina; and, have informed local and public policy through peacemaking circles. Today, we have adapted cognitive-behavioral stages of change into all aspects of our organization; boldly continuing to help very high-risk young people grow, learn and become agents of change in their own lives and in the community. Through intensive, transformational relationship building, Roca helps young men re-engage in society by moving them through the stages of change becoming self-sufficient and living out of harm’s way. Please provide a personal bio. Note this may be used in Changemakers marketing material. Mary (Molly) Baldwin is Roca’s Founder/Executive Director. Molly has over 33 years of experience working with young people and communities in the arenas of youth development, criminal justice and community organizing. A tireless advocate and pioneer, Molly believes all can “be the change.” Her practical and collaborative approach enriches her stature as a visionary leader. She is highly regarded in the community, bringing together the major institutions that affect urban youth’s lives, to build trust, accountability and communication across diverse individuals and groups.
Contact Information:
Shari Mendler
Grants Coordinator Roca, Inc. (Community-Based Organization) Discussions about this entry |
Journey of Hope: Young Men Leading Change
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Given that many of the young men being served through Roca are not ready for work and repeatedly fail at employment, Roca has developed a transitional employment model (Roca Work Projects) that combines earned income (business development to generate funds), youth development programming, and intensive case management to help young people develop the skills they need over time, allowing for multiple failures to lead to success. Roca Work Projects operates two social enterprises:
? Keep Empowering Yourself (KEY) Project was designed to serve Roca’s youth with virtually no employment skills and substantial behavior challenges. Roca’s KEY Project is a transitional employment program that hires very high-risk youth and young adults to work on cleaning, painting, and grounds and building maintenance teams and teaches them the soft skills they need to get and keep a job. The KEY Project is designed to help young people understand that they hold the key to their own success, that they can make positive decisions, reduce risky behaviors, get ready to go to work, and become self-sufficient.
? Circle Catering offers the next step in transitional employment, designed to provide six - to twelve - month transitional employment opportunities for our most socially competent young adults every year. Circle Catering, a full service catering business featuring a wide menu of foods, including healthy Latino selections, maintains a portion of its positions (i.e. line cooks, delivery persons and servers) for transitional employment positions, enabling high risk youth to develop hard skills in the food service industry.
As participants progress through phases of the project, they will receive in depth training, work experience, skill development and personal and career counseling. Roca job developers work with young people when their youth workers identify that they are ready to look for work. Once placed, young people are provided intensive retention support, continued job replacement if needed, and coaching for life goal plans for up to two years after placement.
Hi Shari,
How do you gauge your "effective" engagement of the youth? What constitutes effective engagement as opposed to un-effective? Also, you mention that you help provide employment opportunities. Can you give some examples of these opportunities?
Lastly, I was most excited to read the origin of the innovation section! Can you please tell us more about the HIV project, the peace summits, the social enterprises that youth create, and the public policy sessions? This is all very exciting and I don't think there was nearly enough emphasis placed on it in the rest of the form. If you have a chance, please expand on each of these unique aspects of your program. Thanks!
Dana Frasz
Changemakers
Relationships with Other Adults: Roca recognizes that it is essential for the young person to be able to use the model of the transformational relationship as an example of a healthy relationship that can be fostered with other adults and peers. Evidence for the emergence of this ability is the young person developing meaningful and sustained relationships beyond the transformational relationship with his/her youth worker both inside Roca and elsewhere. Roca believes that only to the extent that this happens will the young person be building the network of supports essential to transitioning to self-sufficient living that is out of harm's way.
Promoting the Stages of Change (developing): This relates to making advances through the stages of change related to specific outcomes resulting in re-engagement in education, readiness for retaining employment, and increasing positive life skills.
--> Long winded answer so far, but in summary "effective" engagement means to us that a young person is in a process of moving from a Phase I to a Phase II relationship, and/or is actively working or being supported in making positive change in their lives. We measure a mark of engagement as a young person's establishment of sustained relationship(s) with our youth workers, which in turn help support and move them towards clear cognitive and behavioral changes (decreasing drug use and risky behavior, for example, showing up to Roca's programming and showing up more consistently, being able to concentrate for longer periods of time, handling upset or conflict in calmer ways, contemplating making social changes and setting life goals for one's self). We do not give up on any one young person, using times when they fail, rebel, or stop showing up to intensify our street outreach and help a young person identify and overcome barriers to success, allowing them to enter any of Roca's programs as many times as it takes to find success.
Phase II – years two and three of transformational relationship development
Phase II is focused on deepening, sustaining, and leveraging the relationship to promote change an to begin identifying and dealing with risky and/or harmful behaviors that are barriers to young people living self-sufficiently and out of harm’s way. Phase II does not mean that young people are in action on every or any level for that matter, or that they won’t relapse through their change process. A Phase II Transformational Relationship does imply that the relationship can hold, push, and challenge very hard things and still be maintained. Phase II includes Moving to Mutuality, Forming Relationships with other Adults, and Promoting the Stages of Change as related to education, employment, and life skills outcomes.
Moving to Mutuality: In this stage, the young person begins to reciprocate within the relationship, initiating contacts and involvement. He or she starts to develop expectations within the transformational relationship, asking for and receiving constructive help and support – and holding the staff member accountable for responding accordingly. But as part of this, Roca believes that the converse is equally important – that it is essential that the young person also recognize the legitimacy of requests by the staff member that the young person begin to act differently, to change aspects of his or her life – and be held accountable for doing so. This is the stage in which Roca expects to pursue good outcomes for youth as "relentlessly" as it pursues their engagement early on, when still reaching out to them on the streets, homes or the community.
Roca thinks of transformational relationships as a two-phase developmental sequence:
Phase I – the first year of transformational relationship development
Phase 1 is entirely focused on the staff’s efforts to re-engage and build trust with the young person to a level where the worker is confident they have established enough trust and credibility to begin intentional work through the stages of change related to specific outcomes. Phase 1 is directly related to the quality and depth of the relationship. Phase 1 includes Choosing In, Time on Task, and the Promoting the Stages of Change as related to “showing up”.
Choosing in As described above, this is the stage where a youth worker's outreach to an individual is marked by one or both "choosing in" – to pursue a deeper, change-focused relationship. Roca holds itself accountable for promoting the development of all relationships in which staff and/or a young person has "chosen in," recognizing this as the first stage of a transformational relationship.
Time on task Staff are expected to interact personally no less than three times a week with each young person with whom they are in a transformational relationship. Staff work on fully understanding where young people "are at" and begin to relentlessly foster a relationship of trust and change. Typically, this stage lasts 4-6 months, however, staff have up to one year as for highly disconnected and disengaged young people may need that much time to allow a youth worker into their life and begin to trust.
Promoting Stages of Change (early) This relates to helping a young person get ready to “show up”. It is about getting them ready to think about change and inspire yearning in young people for something different, something that holds possibility and hope.
Dear Dana: Thank you for your questions. I will answer in multiple installments to address the topic of "engagement" --
At the core of Roca’s work with high-risk young people, lies the Transformational Relationship Model. We fundamentally understand that in order to engage very disconnected and disengaged young people in opportunities to move toward self-sufficiency and living out of harm’s way, it is essential to first spend the time to reconnect and re-engage them in positive relationships. The very name of the model, Transformational Relationship, is intended to help everyone (youth workers, young people, police, teachers, partners, etc…) understand that the reason for engagement is change or transformation. Transformational Relationships create a connection that can hold the balance and the tension of growth and change as young men increase positive knowledge, attitudes, and behaviors over time and through the stages of change.
Roca has identified five stages that an individual typically will move through on the way to undertaking intentional efforts to improve his or her life and then sustaining them:
1. Pre-contemplation- The young person is not thinking about or has explicitly rejected change;
2. Contemplation.-The young person is now thinking about change, and perhaps seeks out Roca or some other program; also, she or he may respond to some suggestions from the staff member; 3. Planning-The young person and Roca staff talk about what it would take to make change happen, and what the young person wants in the future;
4. Action-The young person begins to take positive steps toward improving his or her life through practice (trial and error) - in the context of a plan that has been discussed in detail between the young person and Roca staff;
5. Sustaining-Through continuing staff support during difficult times and new cooperative efforts, the young person is able to achieve concrete improvements in his or her life, move demonstrably toward achieving a self-sustaining lifestyle, and is living out of harm's way.