Youth
Nearly 40% of 11th graders in the West Contra Costa Unified School District have reported “chronic sadness,” according to a recent California Healthy Kids Survey. The survey says chronic sadness has been on the rise in the county and the state, across grade levels, since 2017. “This is definitely shocking,” said LaShante Smith, the district’s director of positive school climate, after presenting the survey results at the Sept. 6 school board meeting. Smith said the district is hoping to turn…
Unhoused young people in Richmond will soon have a new housing option — the Richmond Tiny House Village Garden and Farm, the city’s response to the growing number of youth who lack secure housing. Richmond City Council this month approved a lease for the land with the Richmond Police Activities League, allowing the planned Richmond Tiny House Village Garden and Farm to continue moving forward. Groundbreaking is set for Saturday, with completion in July. The village will provide emergency transitional…
In honor of Black History Month, Richmond Public Library will hold a free event on Thursday, honoring the city’s early Black recreation and sports leaders. The program, called “Straight Outta Richmond,” will acknowledge Charlie Reid, Eural McKelvy, and C.A. Robertson who organized sports activities that led to a competitive but healthy environment, fostered collaboration, and created a pathway for some Richmond kids to play professional sports. Reid and McKelvy are deceased, but Robertson is expected to attend. “This program speaks…
On a Sunday afternoon in late September, TC Ball entered Richmond’s Multicultural Bookstore with a cart full of kings, queens, bishops, rooks, knights, and pawns and boards to start the first of several chess classes for children. “Cool people play chess,” said Ball, 69, founder and director of the West Coast Chess Alliance in Richmond, as he prepared to start the class. He fell in love with chess about 40 years ago when he was at college, and then 13…
In 2019, after eight years as an English teacher at Richmond High School, Rebekah Ponce-Larsen was excited to start a new job as a librarian at Lovonya DeJean Middle School. Being a librarian, she thought, would give her an opportunity to work with kids but in a different way. “I have more time to get to know individual students sometimes than teachers do,” she said. It’s through that personal relationship with students that Ponce-Larsen has transformed the library at DeJean,…
Robin Donovan’s 13-year-old son didn’t get to trick-or-treat last year because of the pandemic. Instead, he and some friends shared a big bag of candy in the family’s El Cerrito backyard. Donovan’s son wasn’t alone. “Normally we got a lot of trick-or-treaters, hundreds in the past. Last year we didn’t have any,” Donovan said. “When I talked to people last year, nobody was planning to send their kids trick-or-treating.” Donovan’s son, 12 at the time, was old enough to understand…
Cinthia Hernandez was on the verge of dropping out of high school when she joined Richmond’s YouthWORKS in 2008. She credits the job program with much of her later success — an internship with the California Attorney General’s Office, a bachelor’s degree in social welfare from UC Berkeley, and her current position of program assistant for the project that helped shape her. “The summer youth employment program was able to open so many doors for me,” Hernandez said. Over the…
Students in the West Contra Costa Unified School District may return to school on April 19.
Office of Neighborhood Change Agent James Houston mentors young people in the community as a way to interrupt gun violence in Richmond.