2022 Annual Report

Dear Friends,

No year in recent memory has been easy, but this year has felt harder than most. Even as the pandemic waned, we veered toward war and economic pressure. Meanwhile, a rising tide of gun violence engulfed the lives of more young black and brown people in our nation’s most dispossessed communities.

Most gun violence is predictable. We know the places where most bullets are shot in our cities, and we know who’s doing the shooting. But that doesn’t make stopping it any easier.

In this annual report, we hope to provide a breath of possibility.

At the center of violence live young people who have been failed by the system. They’ve lost trust, so they lash out at offers of help. But we can help them change if we understand the impact that trauma has on their thoughts, feelings, and actions.

Anybody who’s a victim or witness of gun violence has experienced at least one traumatic event. Most of the young people we know have experienced many. They often live with ongoing, complex PTSD. It leaves them in a near-constant state of ‘fight, flight, or freeze,’ so violence leads to more violence.

At Roca, the idea of healing is not lofty or naïve—it is practical. Our Rewire cognitive behavioral theory (CBT) approach offers young people a solid pathway to freedom from trauma’s constraints. Roca’s Impact Institute teaches the same CBT skills to criminal justice partners who want to improve their interactions with young people.

A young person who thinks he has to retaliate can pause and ask himself, is that true? is that thought helpful? instead of simply reacting. And a police officer, triggered by a young person’s behavior, can use CBT to stop and realize that trauma is playing a role in everything they do.

Ours is a democratic approach. In the end it is the young person who makes the almost unimaginable decision to change the course of his life, despite a lifetime of experience telling him he isn’t worth saving. It is the cop who deepens her understanding of the community she serves. It is the probation officer who chooses to see the person behind the paperwork.

This isn’t a fantasy. Each year we rigorously assess our own performance and outcomes, and in 2022 we also worked with two third-party evaluators. Both internal and external data suggest that Roca’s trauma-informed approach to community violence intervention works.

We have to dismantle the structural racism that creates ever-deepening poverty and provokes daily violence on our streets. At the same time, we must respond to the trauma and violence that is occurring right now. So Roca continues to do what we do best: teaching one young person at a time to pause, breathe, and try something different.

To be healed from trauma that has had you locked in its grip for your entire life is to be able to transcend suffering and loss and move forward—possibly by forgiving, most likely never by forgetting—but most importantly by becoming able to choose to be alive and around to see the day through.

In the global and political moment we are in now, freedom feels more vital than ever. I hope you will join me in continuing our work to liberate young people and communities from the racism, trauma, and violence that confines them.

We could not do this work without the generosity and partnership of so many. Thank you for your support and confidence in Roca.

Sincerely,