Who We Are

Strategic Methods

Roca’s Theory of Change is that young people thrive and lead change when they understand, practice, and live the values of belonging, generosity, competence, and independence. In order to help youth and young adults understand, practice and live these values, we use five strategic methods: (1) relentless street work and outreach; (2) transformational relationships; (3) peacemaking circles; (4) opportunities for life skills, education, and employment; and, (5) engaging the institutions that are a part of young people’s lives.

These methods are used to engage young people and others in a process of change that enables them to increase positive knowledge, attitudes, and behaviors over time and in stages, which allow youth and young adults to be self-sufficient and live out of harm’s way.

Relentless Street Work and Outreach

Roca works with young people who are without the relationships, resources, or support to keep them alive and help them imagine and embrace possibility, learning, and change. Through relentless outreach and support, Roca builds life-altering, transformational relationships between disconnected young people and caring adults. Relentless not only means engaging with these young people when they are most resistant, it means meeting them where they are – in the streets, in their homes, at school. For many of these young people, voluntarily coming into Roca is not a realistic expectation. Youth workers continue to meet them in the places where they are until they are ready to engage within Roca.

Transformational Relationships

At the core of Roca’s work with 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. It means showing up in a young person’s life, over and over, both when things are going well and especially when it gets very hard. Transformational Relationships create a connection that can hold the balance and the tension of growth and change. They engage young people and adults that care in a process of change that enables them to increase positive knowledge, attitudes, and behaviors over time and through the stages of change.

Peacemaking Circles

Roca uses this alternative communication technique to enable discussions around challenging issues and facilitate personal learning, healing, accountability, and community building. We learned peacemaking circles from the Tagish Tlingit people of the Yukon Territory and share them to the best of our ability as we learned them.

The circle process is “simple but not easy,” and must be experienced to be fully grasped and replicated. There is an intangible quality to circles that must be experienced to be understood. However, there are some key structures that help to define the circle.

• The meeting space is the most visible structure. Participants are seated in a circle focusing on the center where symbolic objects may be placed to remind participants of values shared among those in the circle.
• A talking piece is used as a way to ensure respect between speakers and listeners. The talking piece is passed from person to person within the circle and only the person holding the piece may speak.
• Two “keepers” of the circle have been identified. The keepers guide the participants and keep the circle as a safe space. While it is possible to have only one keeper, generally a team of two is preferable.
• Ceremony and ritual are used to create safety and form.
• Consensus decision making honors the values and principles of peacemaking circles and helps participants to stay grounded in them.

Transitional Employment,
Alternative Education, and Life Skills

Roca has worked very hard to create places where our young people can learn and practice the necessary skills that will allow them to successfully reconnect and to advance their educational and employment opportunities. We design and develop stage appropriate programming to responsibly serve our specific target populations. Roca is committed to on-going evaluation of program effectiveness, progress, and impact.

Given that most young people at Roca will go to work before they complete their education, Roca has developed a unique transitional employment model to help young people with virtually no job skills learn and practice the skills they need to get a job and stay employed. This includes a combination of earned income and transitional employment programming, job placement and readiness support and partnerships with area workforce and educational institutions.

Helping high-risk young people to re-engage with education is particularly challenging as many of them have experienced low to minimal educational success, less than basic literacy, and have had negative experiences with education systems. To address this, Roca works with area school systems to help young people stay in school and graduate, operates out-of-school and adult education programs, and has implemented an innovative “alternative” adult education model specifically designed to re-engage young people.

Life skills and engagement activities, run regularly by youth workers, are used to create entry points for young adults who are not quite ready to dive into educational classes, pre-employment activities or life skills curriculum based groups. Life skills also includes addressing court issues, housing and living skills, parenting education, child development, substance abuse, mental health, and physical health.

Engaged Institutions Strategy

Roca is fortunate to work with many wonderful individual, organizational and institutional partners. Given these partners’ involvement in the lives of young people, Roca’s engaged institution strategy is designed to promote informal and formal practice, procedure, policy and systemic change.

The institutions that are in a young person’s life – schools, local government, agencies, and organizations – are just as influential to the needs and growth of a young person as Roca is. In recognizing this, Roca sought to create partnerships with these institutions, and open the lines of communication in order to best serve young people. In order to share the values Roca developed, and be truly committed to every one belonging, it was important to establish and maintain these connections.