Who We Are

History

Founded in 1988, Roca is a youth development organization committed to serving the most disenfranchised and disengaged young people ages 14-24 (street/court/gang involved; drop-outs; young parents; and refugee and immigrants) in the Greater Boston area including the communities of Chelsea, Revere, East Boston, and Charlestown, MA. Roca builds relationships with the institutions in their lives of young people (criminal justice, child welfare, education, health, etc.). We provide the opportunities necessary for young people to live and succeed. Through intensive relationship building, Roca helps young people re-engage in society - moving them into educational, employment, and life skills programming.

Launched from a single grant from the Teen Challenge Fund of Massachusetts, a passionate group of young people and adults started Roca to address teen pregnancy prevention and violence in Chelsea. Roca has helped more than 15,000 young people make positive, profound changes in their lives, creating a nationally acclaimed model of transformational relationships as a vehicle for youth development, and pioneering effective local, regional, and national relationships with government, state, religious, health, and community partners.

Throughout the years, young leaders have taught us about their lives, the on-going changes of young people and their needs, the importance of  trusting long term relationships, opportunities to learn and build skills, what it takes to build trust and have a place to belong, having opportunities to demonstrate leadership, and the power of hope. In the early years, young street-involved drug dealers, immigrant youth, and young parents showed us the way to begin. Over time, gang members taught us about creating answers to community violence, and peer leaders created programming and raised funds for our building. Migrations of young people from different countries taught us about the world. Roca’s young people have launched one of the country’s first Cambodian American HIV/AIDS Project, the Azi AIDS Project, started the work in violence prevention and education in Revere, hosted area peace summits with gang-involved young people, started our first social enterprise, Tacos Unidos (now Circle Catering), run an award-winning dance group, Essencia Latina, and informed local and public policy through peacemaking circles.