Youth & Education – The Rising Foundation

Rainbow Labs

Executive Director — Fri, 21 Jun 2024 00:00:44 +0000

The Pathhacking Accelerator, a dynamic 12-week after-school STEM Accelerator Lab in South Los Angeles for LGBTQ+ high school youth, aims to combat the profound underrepresentation and systemic challenges faced by LGBTQ+ individuals in the STEM fields. Rainbow Labs designed this program meticulously to bridge gaps in STEM education for LGBTQ+ and LGBTQI+-BIPOC youth, providing hands-on activities and mentorship in pivotal STEM areas like coding, robotics, artificial intelligence, and virtual reality. By pairing students with LGBTQ+ and LGBTQI+-BIPOC mentors who are professionals in these fields, the program offers strong role models and fosters an inclusive environment that celebrates diversity and promotes representation.

The program structure is robust, featuring bi-weekly, 90-minute sessions that allow students to engage deeply with the curriculum and develop their skills through direct interaction with their mentors. Complementing these sessions are field trips to leading STEM companies and guest sessions by professionals from major corporations such as Google and Amazon, which will provide real-world context and further learning opportunities. The project’s culmination is a Youth in STEM Panel event, enabling students to showcase their projects and network with industry leaders and peers. Rainbow Labs designed this event to affirm and strengthen community connections, enhancing the participants’ confidence and encouraging them to envision a future where they are active, recognized contributors to the STEM fields. Through this project, Rainbow Labs seeks to inspire and equip the next generation of LGBTQ+ STEM professionals, ensuring they receive the support, resources, and recognition they deserve.

Youth Co-op Connection

Executive Director — Thu, 06 Jul 2023 00:00:39 +0000

Acta Non Verba: Youth Urban Farm Project’s (ANV) mission is to elevate life for youth and their families in Oakland and beyond by challenging oppressive dynamics and environments through urban farming and access to the natural environment. Founded and led mainly by women and People of Color, ANV engages youth and families in safe and creative outdoor spaces in Oakland and the East Bay, CA. ANV strengthens young people’s understanding of nutrition, food production, healthy living, and the natural environment, and strengthens their ties to their community.

The Youth Co-op Connection project focuses on cooperative education, in practice, necessitates active learning, self-directed inquiry, and hands-on experience. It promotes learning that is relevant and connected to the lives of young individuals, nurturing their ability to question, analyze, and challenge the status quo, in collective action. This project centers underserved Black youth and will offer a nuanced and comprehensive open source curriculum for cooperative education, catered to middle school age youth. The curriculum design will be adaptable and applicable across diverse education settings, including public schools, youth entrepreneurship programs, alternative education settings, and after-school programs.

Sociocracy For All

Executive Director — Mon, 16 Jan 2023 00:00:43 +0000

Sociocracy For All (SoFA) aims to spread the use of egalitarian, sociocratic governance. SoFA provides content and training, supporting networks and communities of practice among people in similar sectors and language groups.

The Metasynthesis and Research on Sociocracy (MARS) project systematizes, advances, and curates the research on sociocracy and in decentralized, consent-based organizations in general. MARS has a special focus on three focus areas:

Team performance
DEI (diversity, equity, and inclusion)
Psychological safety

It will provide high-quality information for practitioners on what research shows in useful measures around those focus areas in the context of self-management. We hope to build a stronger case for our work and our colleagues to strengthen the movement overall. We’re also excited about stimulating more academic research on sociocracy and helping to focus that research around questions that are particularly useful for the field.

Agroecology Commons

Executive Director — Mon, 26 Sep 2022 00:00:26 +0000

Agroecology Commons cultivates knowledge sharing, community action, and global solidarity for decolonized land stewardship, collective healing, and justice within the food movement. We are building infrastructure for our incubator farm that provides participants from Agroecology Commons’ Farmer Mobilization, and annual Bay Area Farmer-to-Farmer Training a portion of the land to grow crops, hone skills, and launch their farm dreams with mentorship and cooperative support. The incubator farm offers shared infrastructure, tools, materials, and seeds while creating opportunities for beginning farmers to be in right relationship with land, place, and culturally appropriate food. For years to come, this farm will be covered with ancestral crops from around the world including Sierra Leone, Iraq, Philippines, Italy, and Japan to name a few; songs in many languages will be sung, and people will be cooperatively tending, growing, and learning together.

Arthur C Clarke Center for Human Imagination

Executive Director — Thu, 10 Feb 2022 00:00:13 +0000

The Arthur C. Clarke Center for Human Imagination at UC San Diego

The Clarke Center is a research-and-practice hub, where the best insights from the neuroscience of imagination are connected with the latest in technology and put to use to unlock the transformative power of imagination across age groups, and communities to tackle the most pressing issues facing the planet. Collectively, we face seemingly impossible challenges. Yet imagination discovers new possibilities within the impossible. Imagination is at the root of empathy and compassion. Imagination gives rise to hope. We aim to unleash the power of imagination to tackle the most pressing issues facing life on Earth—to envision and build a more equitable and sustainable world.

SDFutures: Youth Futures Literacy

Started in 2018, SDFutures is a series of youth-oriented programs designed to help young people develop futures literacy as a core skillset for imagination in the 21st century. What is futures literacy? It is the skill to deliberately imagine future possibilities, reflect upon them, use that understanding to shape present action, and build new worlds. It takes what is typically either unconscious or an expression of anxiety and turns it into a powerful tool for changemaking. Futures literacy has been increasingly recognized as a core 21st competency. UNESCO defines futures literacy as “a universally accessible skill” that “allows people to better understand the role of the future in what they see and do. Being futures literate empowers the imagination, enhances our ability to prepare, recover and invent as changes occur.” Under the SDFutures umbrella, the Clarke Center has organized yearlong programs for students studying public policy, imaginative fiction writers across five continents, and undergraduate students. With the support of the Rising Foundation, SDFutures will pilot a K-6 program and card game for children to explore the possibilities for change across their lifetimes and the power of their own choices and voices to shape that future.

Youth Power Coalition

Executive Director — Thu, 11 Nov 2021 15:24:38 +0000

The Youth Power Coalition (YPC) weaves community, makes information accessible, develops leaders, mobilizes resources, and advocates for youth power. Youth-led collective impact is both outcome and process. The outcome is every Black teenager is safe, every child has housing, every young person can shape the world.

The process is

community-led, particularly by young people most impacted by inequity
comprehensive, recognizing the interdependence of systems, institutions, people, history, and context
co-creative, with people of diverse backgrounds, identities, and perspectives working together
equity-centered, unrelenting in our pursuit of a world in which social, economic, and political outcomes are not based upon a person’s background or identity
well-capitalized, investing generously in community-led change
caring, valuing not just metrics and numbers, but dignity, respect, and belonging
courageous, where we dare to be vulnerable, take risks, and act

We call these the 7C’s of Collective Impact.

Our project is to create a mass training program that equips young people of color and
from low-income backgrounds with the skills needed to organize youth-led collective
impact efforts.

“Mass training is not one big training. Mass training allows for thousands of leaders to join your movement while maintaining autonomy (allowing people to take independent action) and unity (on the key DNA of the movement – the story, strategy, structure, and culture). Mass trainings accomplish the following:

Give people the ability to act autonomously through distributing the DNA of the
movement.
Replicate and scale – everything in the training program from the curriculum to the roles to the support structure is systematized in order to grow exponentially while maintaining quality.
Provide transformative leadership development experiences, such that participants leave with a transformed understanding of themselves as leaders, and a new vision for what’s possible.” —Mass Training Webinar, Momentum Movement

We will have created a mass training program when we have

A standardized curriculum
A cohort of young people and adult allies to lead training sessions
The infrastructure to support 10,000 people joining the youth-led collective impact
movement at any given time

Soul Shoppe

Executive Director — Wed, 25 Aug 2021 15:37:22 +0000

Soul Shoppe’s mission is to create safe learning environments that bring forth a culture of compassion, connection and curiosity—eliminating bullying at the roots. Our innovative, interactive and highly effective programs give the entire school community an EXPERIENCE of empathy, transforming not only our behaviors, but the very ways we see each other.

Soul Shoppe programs support kids by giving conflict resolution tools that allow them to support each other as allies. We have reached more than 525,000 students. In addition to working with students, Soul Shoppe supports the entire school community through the creation and facilitation of dynamic staff-development trainings that give teachers the necessary tools to foster academic growth and social-emotional learning, as well as parent workshops and resources.

We are piloting a “train the trainer” program to certify adults in our Peacemaker Program, where 3rd-5th graders build their own prosocial behaviors while learning how to support their schoolmates’ development. This pilot program is built on Soul Shoppe’s award winning Social Emotional Learning (SEL) curriculum developed over the last 20 years. Nationwide, SEL programs are increasingly shown to be a key component to increase student’s academic performance and pro-social behavior, and to decreasing anxiety, behavior problems, and substance abuse.

Sociocracy For All

Executive Director — Tue, 24 Aug 2021 15:34:14 +0000

SoFA is itself a sociocratic organization of about 180 members, some of whom are paid full or part-time, and all volunteer a significant amount of time operating SoFA as a member-run nonprofit.

We understand SoFA as an ecosystem where all parts form a cohesive and mutually beneficial whole. We offer:

High-quality content freely available via Creative Commons licenses that help people discover and learn sociocracy and improve their use of sociacracy with content around facilitation, roles and circles, conflict resolution and communication.
Training ranging from introductory to advanced about the three core elements of sociocracy: consent decision making, designing decentralized organizations, and feedback processes.
Consulting services to support organizations in their impelemntation of sociocracy
The opportunity for those who are excited by sociocracy to join SoFA as members and participate in the continuous learning and contribution to the spread of sociocracy. These members join working teams we call “Circles.”
Learning and networking events for the public such as conferences, webinars, and communities of practice.

Using sociocracy with children is a step towards building a future where there are more inclusive decisions, with adults who have grown up experiencing empowerment and are well-versed in collaborative decision-making. In a formal study at the Rainbow Cummunity School in Asheville, NC, USA, students practicing sociocracy were found to have a much greater ability to adopt the perspective of others than their peers. Sociocracy increases empathy as we learn to deeply listen to others. Everyone’s voices are heard and everyone’s needs are considered. This can lead to a more respectful environment for children to flourish in.

Wealth & Values Initiative

Executive Director — Mon, 01 Feb 2021 15:30:28 +0000

The mission of the WVI Dolphin Foundation ( DF ) is to provide concrete ways and
means by which we can encourage WVI Legacy Families and others of influence to utilize their considerable prestige, wealth, and power to uplift culture by supporting earlier stage/smaller nonprofit causes that are deeply aligned with the Dolphin culture and code of conduct.

WVI Dolphin Foundation – Dolphin Code of Conduct:
Give first and keep giving
Add value even if there is no transaction
Earn trust with every touch
Be a serial connector for others
Build long term relationships and community
Monetize

In collaboration with a variety of existing partners, the WVI Dolphin Foundation is
building a “Mentor the Mentors” pilot program in which we mentor Military service
members and well known athletes to support underserved kids and Gold-Star
kids — American children who have lost a parent to war – through a curriculum
including character skills development youth sports, exposure to trades and STEM
and professional skill development.

Masiyembo

Executive Director — Mon, 25 Jan 2021 14:05:36 +0000

“Masiyembo” is an isiXhosa word that most simply translates as: “Let’s go back to our roots”. Yet, as several local elders note, it also has a deeper soul-resonant meaning which speaks of a profound remembering of the human spirit, our shared values and deep connection with all life.

The Masiyembo Association is a diverse collaboration of professional nature/wilderness
guides, outdoor facilitators, mentors, and artists from across South Africa.

We are committed to providing more:

Opportunities for (historically disadvantaged) South Africans to find meaning, connection and well being through immersive nature experiences.
Members with a supportive peer-to-peer network that enhances the exposure and quality of experiences they provide, including the capacity to train others in facilitation.
Advocacy around the importance of nature connectedness and outdoor therapeutic interventions for healthcare and beneficial psycho-social outcomes.

Our Members utilize immersive experiences and connective nature-based processes to reawaken and revitalize our relationship with earth and each other. Specifically, we are:

Bonded by a commitment to care, contribute and deeply connect with all life
Motivated by a desire to learn and share our passion, experience and knowledge
Inspired to co-create more opportunities for people of all backgrounds to find
nourishment and wellbeing through nature, and for the benefit of nature.