Roca: Supporting Young People to Thrive and Lead Change.

Source: (2002) Chelsea, MA: Roca, Inc. Downloaded 22 November 2005.

Since its inception in 1988, thousands of young people from Chelsea and Revere, Massachusetts
have reclaimed their lives at Roca through the power of transformational relationships. Driven by
a vision of children thriving and leading change, Roca has become a place where disenfranchised
youth find a safe haven for growing and nurturing their dreams: both for themselves and their
community. Rejecting the deficit model—a model that sees young people as the victims of the
social ills that they have experienced: poverty, racism, war in their native countries, and violence
in their own communities, Roca has built it’s programming on the strengths of these resilient
youth. Roca’s theory of change is that as young people experience greater degrees of belonging
and generosity in their lives, they become better positioned to thrive and lead change as they grow into adulthood. Author’s abstract.