Translator: Delia Cohen Reviewer: Ellen Maloney
(Video) Da'Swan: They really never gave up on me.
Even though I pushed them away and wanted them to give up on me,
they didn't never gave up on me.
Derrik: They're like that annoying fly that never goes away.
They'll find you, and if they don't find you, they'll call you.
If they can't get your number, they'll get it from a friend
that they know you hang out with or associate with often; they'll ask.
Armando: I was dodging them basically,
and they came again, and again and again and again.
Tyleek: I think he put a GPS inside one of my drinks one day,
and I swallowed it.
Hell, literally, I've been at a trap house, smoking mad weed,
and he'd pop up at the door. (Knock, knock)
"Yo, is Tyleek there?"
"Why are you coming to the drug house looking for me. Stop. No."
Josh: If you stop coming and stop trying to do something good with yourself,
then they're not going to give up on you.
They're going to keep coming and encouraging you
to be a better person.
Captain Timothy Connolly: Once they grab onto you, they don't let go.
Even when they grab onto me, they don't let go.
Dep Superintendent Kelly Nee: They were tenacious
at finding people that they could work with.
That's an understatement; they are relentless and persistent
but in a good way.
Xavier: Persistent.
That's the one word, persistent.
Derrik: My dad isn't here; my brother isn't here.
My little brother isn't here.
Some of my best friends might not be here,
but Roca's going to be here.
(Applause)
Molly: Yes, we are all those things.
We are relentless, annoying, persistent.
Really, we are a pain in the ass,
but these young people know, and we know,
this is the only way to reach them.
People are afraid of them.
They are in gangs, on drugs,
in and out of jail,
and every criminal justice system and every politician blames them
for causing the most harm to themselves, their families, and our communities,
and tragically, this can be true.
Whether we understand it or not,
whether we like it or not,
something has gone terribly wrong for so many young people in our country.
In Chicago and Baltimore,
in New York and New Orleans,
so many of them believe
that violence is the only way of life,
that shooting people gains respect,
that guns are normal,
and that dying young is just what happens.
For these young people, 29 years ago and a day,
we began Roca.
We started in a small city near Boston:
Chelsea, Massachusetts.
But this is not just a story about reaching them,
this is about fundamentally changing ourselves.
It is about learning what it takes to be worthy of working with them.
It is about sticking with the ones who want nothing to do with us,
being clear that relapse is part of change, and using data.
In the beginning, we had a lot of fun.
We did outreach and organizing,
leadership development programs and events,
and I hope we did more good than bad.
But like most organizations, we had no idea.
At one point, we knew hundreds of gang members,
and they would come to Roca and go to classes, and sit in circles,
and feel really good about themselves.
And then they would go home,
deal drugs, and shoot people.
This was not the point.
We knew we needed a big-time change,
so we brought the organization to a halt,
we did research,
we looked at our failures,
we focused on what we did well,
and we were painfully honest.
We know there are lots of great programs for young people,
and even young people in trouble
who show up.
For those who show up, go get a GED.
Go to class every Tuesday,
and we'll teach you to be a chef.
We also knew that no one really worked with the young people
who were not ready, willing, or able to participate in a program or keep a job.
Those who do not show up.
They are angry and left out.
They are depressed and often cause harm,
and no one wants to spend time with them.
This became the whole purpose of our work.
Show up at Roca ready to participate, and we will show you the door.
Run away from us, tell us to go to hell, and you are in.
(Laughter)
So, we get a name and maybe an address, and we go to the courts and jails.
We ask the police for the 50 people they arrest the most,
and we roam the streets.
We call what we do "relentless outreach."
It is really stalking, but that is not legal.
(Laughter)
We go look for the young people on our list over and over again,
and we knock on doors
and we don't even care if they like us.
We brush off the "f*** you"-s
and find them even when they are hiding from us.
We don't really put a GPS in your drink, but we will go for you, again and again.
Our youth workers are from jail and Yale,
and they are awesome either way.
We teach them that "no" means to go again
and that being relentless is the key to the work.
Only after knocking on the door a million times
does the work really begin.
All of us change in the context of a relationship.
We all need help, we all need a push, and we all need support.
So, we build relationships to build real trust and invite them
into new skills and opportunities.
The challenge, however, is we spend time with those who do not show up,
which makes teaching education and job skills an interesting task.
We have essentially built a "get your life together" school.
We offer educational programming, prevocational programming,
and we literally drag them out of bed.
They can come for a day or a week.
They get mad at us, they get high, they threaten us, they disappear,
and we go back for them again.
Some young people are in such dangerous gang situations,
they can't even come in to programming.
So, we take it to their home with a roaming teacher
or provide a workforce readiness lesson on the corner.
They don't have to come to Roca every day,
and remember, in the beginning, if they come every day,
they should be in a different program or a job.
And we use data to study change over time,
to understand relapse, and to help them see
that they can learn to show up, gain skills, and go to work.
We are always working on getting better at one thing or another.
First, we had to teach them how to go to work,
so we built a transitional employment program,
we run work crews, and pay them minimum wage to teach them
how to put 60 days in a row,
which we think is a good idea before we place them in another job,
outside of Roca.
It generally takes them a year and a half,
and losing their work slot five to seven times,
before they get to the 60 days.
This is where building in relapse is a good thing.
They need a safe place to learn, to fail,
and to succeed because they never had it.
Next, it became painfully clear
that we had to get on to learning how to work with the police
to keep young people alive.
This was no easy task.
We started out life as traditional street outreach workers,
with an "us versus them: love the kid and hate the cops" mentality,
but we needed to learn and we did.
We believe that everyone belongs,
so everyone belonged, even the police.
We build relationships with every institution
that's either in the lives of these young people or should be,
and we don't even care if they like us.
We are relentless with them, so we can wrap around the young people.
And as the captain says,
"Once we get a hold of you, we don't let go."
Our latest obsession is teaching young people
about their emotions and how to manage them,
so they can learn to think differently, to act differently.
So, we worked with Mass General Hospital
and boiled down all the science of cognitive behavior therapy
to ten core emotional regulation skills.
They have numbers and funny names, like "Fill your tank"
and "Feel your feelings," but we learned that simple is better.
So, we teach the young people, we teach ourselves,
and we hope to teach the cops.
We are also data nuts, because these young people are worth it.
So, we track them and we track ourselves,
and figure out if anything we do is of help.
In fact, we have gotten so good at using data that we are running
one of the nation's first and largest "Pay for Success" contracts.
This project will evaluate our ability to help young people stay out of jail
in the future as compared to a random group of similar young people.
And because jail is so expensive,
we could save the government a lot of money.
This project is financed - yes, I said financed -
with investors like Goldman Sachs and the Laura and John Arnold Foundation.
If the evaluator says we're successful
in five years, then the government pays and the investors get their money back.
This is a new way to do business and no little thing.
We will serve over 1,000 young men
and potentially save the government millions.
It is our great honor and responsibility
to do this work, and our data suggests that we're onto something.
When Harvard dug into our numbers, it showed that the young people at Roca
reduced recidivism by 35% over three years
as compared to a similar group
and is track for a 65% reduction over five years.
These young people can change.
And our data's not just data; our numbers are real people.
Last fall, one of our youth workers
received a call from Joe, who he had been chasing in the streets
and in and out of prison for two years.
Joe called to tell him, "Hey, this Roca thing really works.
Last night, I was in the park with my girl
and this guy looked at me from across the park."
Joe took that as big-time disrespect.
He called his friend and asked his friend to bring him
his backpack, his mask, and a gun.
And Joe went on to say, "When I was sitting there
waiting for my friend and I thought: skill eight, flex your thinking.
Maybe he didn't even see me.
And skill nine, maybe I shouldn't shoot him."
(Laughter)
And Joe decided not to shoot.
He did not shoot.
That one moment was worth all the years of relentless outreach,
every change we've had to make, every painful moment,
and every difficult discussion with young people, our partners, and ourselves.
When I look back at the past 30 years, and forward to the next ten and beyond,
I know that change is possible,
but first we have to change ourselves
so we can help the young people change,
and they can change.
We have to stop pretending that it's okay
that so many young men of color are murdered.
We have to stop pretending that jail is the solution.
We have to stop getting in each other's way
as institutions and programs and start using data
and do things that matter.
And we'd better be relentless
and drive each other crazy until we get it right.
Because every young person, no matter how angry, is worth it.
They are our children.
Thank you.
(Applause)