Roca: A Study in Innovation

When you enter the building of Roca, a youth development organization in Chelsea, Massachusetts, your senses come to life. Young people are sitting at the front desk, dancing in the adjacent studio, walking around with notebooks, talking to youth workers...there is a palpable sense that the youth are comfortable here, and that they have the space and resources to make positive changes.

At Roca, relationships between youth and adults are intentional – in fact, one of the organizational mantras is “we’re running relationships, not programs.” Drawing on its eighteen year history, staff has developed effective strategies for reaching vulnerable youth and functioning in a community responsibly. Many of the lessons they have learned at Roca have groundbreaking implications for the field.

In the past couple of years, the Innovation Center has partnered with Roca to surface and document a number of these practices, as well as provide tools and technical assistance. Two of the most exciting elements of Roca’s work that the Innovation Center staff has investigated and researched are the Engaged Institutions Strategy and transformational relationships.

Realizing that development occurs not only in individuals, but also in the organizations that affect young people’s lives, Roca engages not only youth but the institutions that serve them. The Engaged Institutions Strategy is an effective and holistic approach to connecting and building relationships with these other organizations in order to address the multiple needs of youth in crisis and enhance opportunities for their growth and development. To accomplish this, meetings are scheduled weekly and bi-weekly with the Department of Social Services, probation and the police department, the Department of Youth Services, and the Chelsea school system. Representatives from these organizations talk about young adults who are shared between the agencies and ensure smooth intake of new participants. Roca has a working relationship with the Department of Transitional Assistance (DTA) and facilitates a specialized programming component for young parents.

Roca also facilitates a weekly group with inmates at the Suffolk County House of Correction and is working with the assistant deputy Superintendent to develop a re-entry process for young men and women returning to the community, taking lessons they have learned while incarcerated and using them for the greater good of their neighborhood. This work is literally about Roca building intensive relationships with individuals as well as leadership in organizations and institutions so that Roca and the organizations can hold each other accountable for the support and services they young people need. The Engaged Institutions Strategy is Roca’s most successful community building strategy to date. The focus of the work is always on the young people and helping them to establish structures and systems that they can benefit from the most.

Transformational relationships enable Roca staff to launch young people on the road to a healthy and sustainable future. The interpersonal relationships between staff members of Roca and each young person serve as vehicles for creating opportunities and making paths for each person to undertake his or her own change. In these relationships staff members push, pull, persuade, educate, support, stand beside and consistently show up so as to help the young person to learn to act in his or her own best interest. Roca staff members show up at all times of the day and night wherever youth might be- in their homes, wherever they hang out on the streets, in court, or at school. After a very intentional process of building trust with the youth, the staff person will start to suggest and push for positive changes and responsible behavior and will literally not give up.

These intentional processes are carefully tracked, monitored, and, to the extent possible, planned. Staff members at Roca have ongoing check-ins and supervision regarding the status of relationships, and they are documented ion a computer database in a manner that is transparent and accessible to other staff. The outcomes of this work are taken very seriously. Said one youth worker, “If I am not in the top three when [the youth] are asked to identify the nine most helpful people they know, I know something is wrong.”

For young people in crisis, transformational relationships catalyze a learning process that creates opportunities for relationships with caring adults, building readiness for change, peer group support, opportunities for educational achievement, employment, and meaningful engagement in community and civic life. While providing for the development of a range of basic human skills (including empowerment, self determination, hygiene, responsibility, accountability and personal change), Roca’s transformational relationships engage young people in a structured learning process of personal growth, education, and employment readiness. This provides a foundation that heals and motivates young people in crisis to live life out of harm’s way and thrive.

For more information on the practices at Roca and implementing these strategies in your work, contact us at info@theinnovationcenter.org or 301-270-1700.