Our School Design

This is day three of a design competition taking place at the Caper Center and you see Homies Alumni Javier working with one of our Board members, Dr. G. They are co-designing what the school looks like. Later their vision would be presented at a design competition where we would win first place and also receive the popular vote as well at the Oak Education Design Competition.

Pictured here are Selena, Mercedes and other team members who are creating a fishbone analysis, as to the root causes of why don’t youth who are on the margins graduate from high school? This took place at Corazon del Pueblo, in Oakland California, at one of our community design sessions.

Omar, Cassandra, Priscilla and others are working on a root cause analysis called a fishbone at Corazon del Pueblo, to address root causes as to why young people are not graduating from school?

Presentation of Findings – Mercedes (Alumni of Castlemont), Selena (Alumni of Oakland Military Institute) and Edwin (Alumni of ARISE) are presenting their root cause analysis findings to other young adult leaders, as to why students are not graduating from school and what supports they need to be able to make it through.

Students were paired up in teams of two or three and they are designing different parts of the model. Here the students were at the Oakland Leadership Center and were looking at different parts of the model from curriculum, ideal teachers, extracurricular activities, funding, and many other areas in the design of the school. Here they were tasked with designing outdoor classrooms and the kinds of activities that would be taking space in those places.

Here our young designers took their idea to the UC Berkeley, Graduate School of Business and they met with second-year students where they presented the model of our school and then afterwards the graduate students picked apart the idea and ultimately presented what they thought could work and other ideas that they have. Pictured here is Selena who is sharing the ideas of the school.

Veteran educator Josefina Lopez who taught in Oakland schools for 33 years set in on the design session by young people and was able to hear their root cause analysis and be able to provide feedback from her vast experience. This took place at her community center called Corazón del Pueblo.

In September of 2017 we reunited at a members’ backyard with alumnis from different generations of Homies Empowerment. We shared the need for us to be able to create our own School and its importance. Here one of our alumni Beto is sharing his dreams for what he would like to see.