Oakland Leaf :: Community Transformation Through Creative Education. After school programs for youth. Art, murals, food gardening, media, music, performance arts, leadership, peace, justice.

Youth ROOTS

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http://www.facebook.com/pages/Youth-Roots/283002187518

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Youth Roots plants into Arise High School

Dear Oakland Leaf Fam,

Because of this unforgiving economic climate, I know there has been informal talk about the state of Youth Roots within Oakland Leaf. Especially with budgets being slashed drastically, some of you may have wondered about what would become of Youth Roots. Despite being allocated a budget insufficient to fund even 1 full time employee, not to mention what is needed directly for the youth, it was NEVER an option to fold and go quietly in the night.

Youth Roots has made not only a local Bay Area impact in its young 4 years, but also a national impact. We have generated much excitement and inspiration through our travels to outside of the Bay to cities such as Los Angeles, Houston, Louisville, New York, Portland, and Denver, let alone what we have done here in the Town, San Francisco, and Santa Clara. It would be criminal for the work we have done thus far to be left as a memory. It would be criminal to tell our amazing & committed educators, Daniel "Rep Life" Manning Gray and Jonas Juhlin, that it was a great run while it lasted. It would be criminal to tell our youth who have been instrumental for not only cultivating Roots, but also transforming themselves, that there would not be a Youth Roots for them to return to.

And so like the warriors we are, we fight to remind others and ourselves that we have something to say and something to do. We fight to preserve our family at all costs. We fight to say that we are more determined than EVER to dig deep roots in order to rise up and reach out.

Beginning 2010, Youth Roots will be housed within Arise High School, only a few blocks from the existing Oakland Leaf Mother Garden center. Roots will still be an Oakland Leaf program, but being housed within Arise allows us to more sustainably and effectively work towards figuring what we in strong Youth Development circles have always grappled with: Why do some of our youth continue to find great success, confidence, and ownership in our out-of-school-time programs, yet either 1) hate school, 2) don't go to school, and/or 3) flunk their classes in school?

Being situated within the progressive and community-oriented Arise High gives us the opportunity to be closer to understanding this phenomenon. Additionally, numerous partnerships and synergies will be forged that could bridge amazing programs such as the Ever Forward young men's program, colleges such as Mills and Cal, and teacher education programs such as the REACH institute and the Bay Area Teacher Center.

I am eternally grateful to the leaders at Arise High, whom we have partnered with for a hot minute now, but have really shown solidarity, commitment, and vision as they embrace us into their community.

And of course, I am grateful to YOU all for your support in Youth Roots, especially during this transition.

Much love,

G Reyes

Vision Top

At Youth Roots, our vision is that youth earn their rightful place in society by rooting themselves in their community as prominent leaders, culture producers, and change agents. They engage in a regular practice of critical examination, production, self-reflection, healing, critique, and love. Equipped with New Media advocacy tools of the 21st century, Youth Roots use a foundation of critical social theory and knowledge of self to act & interact as Street Scholar ARTivists* (Asante, 2008), event organizers, & multi-media public communicators against intersecting oppressions By Any Medium Necessary (Asante, 2008). ARTivists do not do art for art's sake. They use their talents to produce a public counterculture of ideas, images, words, music, and performances. Their performance of power is through the power of artistic performance. They stand on the shoulders of the traditional activists & artists who came before them and who are among them, but because art can critique, influence, and inspire change, they are not the same as those who organize through those commonly used direct action methods. By not using those traditional methods do not make them any less activist. There are multiple roles for people to make change. Youth Roots does that through their actions. They do that through their art. They do that through their ARTivism. They dig deep. Root in. Reach out. Rise up.

Referenced Work: * Asante Jr, M.K. (2008). It's bigger than hip hop: The rise of the post-hip-hop generation. New York: St. Martin's Press.

Program Overview Top
Youth ROOTS, or Youth Reaching deep to Overcome Oppression by planting Transformative Seeds of change in the community, grows from 6 Core Beliefs and Commitments:
     1. We Believe in Love;
     2. We Believe in Respect;
     3. We Believe in Becoming;
     4. We Believe in FAMily;
     5. We Believe in Hustle & Discipline; and
     6. We Believe in the Street Scholar Artivist.

Youth Roots is the first line of high school leadership branches within Oakland Leaf. It provides youth with out-of-school opportunities for anti-oppression work, critical inquiry & examination, media production, visual, performing, & video arts, rites of passage, adventure education, event production, workshop facilitation/conference presentations, and character development. The program offers diverse opportunities for personal growth for up to 30 high school students directly for a minimum of 2 days per week (Tue & Thu) from 4:30-7:30 pm at the Oakland Leaf Mother Garden in the Fruitvale District of Oakland. In addition to the regular program days, there are 10 more days required for Rites of Passage activities, Brotherhood-Sisterhood Cyphers, Performances, Events, and Celebrations.
Departing from the Youth Development Model, Youth Roots employs these "10 Seeds to Critical Collective Cultivation":
     1. Critical Social Theory and Intersecting Oppressions as a Sociological Framework
     2. Sisterhood & Brotherhood Cyphers as an adulthood rite of passage Framework
     3. Language, Literacy, & Knowledge of Self as a Critical Pedagogical Framework
     4. Hip Hop as a Cultural Production Framework
     5. Youth Development as a Structural Framework
     6. Rites of Passage as a Spiritual & Physical Training Framework
     7. Artivist Culture Production as a Youth Outcome
     8. Young Elders as a Youth Outcome
     9. Street Scholar Public Intellectualism as a Youth Outcome
     10. Power of Performance as a Youth Outcome

Each Youth Root develops 4 personas to round out themselves as effective communicators: Word Warriors, Just Journalists, Cyba Souljas, Image Infiltratas.

From these personas, each Youth ROOT develops their agency by learning and getting authentic practice to use concrete skills in Spoken Word Poetry, Emceeing, Music Production, Graphic Design, Digital Photography, Digital Video, Digital Journalism (via Podcasting, Digital Storytelling, & Video Production), and Event Production.

Find more photos like this on our Oakland Leaf ning.com site.

APPLY FOR A FELLOWSHIP TO JOIN THE 2009-2010 YOUTH ROOTS CREW! The 1st day of program is Tuesday, October 13, 2009. Download the form in MSWord format here or in Adobe PDF format here.

Contact us at Youth Roots:
     G Reyes, Program Director
     Jonas Juhlin, Rites of Passage, Music Production, & Program Co-Coordinator
     Daniel Gray Kontar, Public Relations, Performance, & Program Co-Coordinator

A Photograph Goes Here: Define VIA the CSS only!

"Either we’re gonna tell our own history or our oppressors will make a history for us."Assata Shakur

Older Video Work Top

Digital Poems by Youth ROOTS 2008-2009
Welcome 2 Oakland

iMovie Digital Poems - Deconstructing Our Identity

Digital Poems from Previous Years
Murder Dubbz Durty 30z

From High St. to the 70s The Town