Real Ones Rising crest Real Ones Rising Foundation
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Real Ones Rising — Mentorship, Coaching, Consulting

Real Ones Rising Foundation · Central Valley, Central Coast & Bay Area, California

Fund the interruption. Fund the way out.

The Real Ones Rising Foundation raises and stewards the charitable dollars behind a root-to-replacement approach to gang intervention and reentry. Your gift doesn't fund a pamphlet — it keeps a credible messenger beside a young person from inside the facility through the full year after release, when the pull of the old life is strongest and most support has already left.

Donate Fund, grant & partner

The root-to-replacement model

Three things at once. Not three steps in a row.

Youth gang involvement is development gone wrong — legitimate developmental needs like belonging, identity, protection, and purpose that the gang stepped in to meet when family, school, and community couldn't. It is not simply a behavior problem. So the work happens at the level where gangs actually operate: identity, belief, loyalty, habit, belonging, and perceived protection. The program your gift funds interrupts what the street installed, works through a method built on trust, and builds what takes its place.

What We Interrupt

Interrupt

The thinking and status systems the street installed:

  • Criminal thinking
  • Gang identity
  • Harmful beliefs
  • Survival habits used in the wrong place
  • Fear-based status
How We Work

Work

A method built on trust — credibility before content, regulation before confrontation:

  • Rapport-first engagement
  • Credible messengers
  • Gang literacy — never gang promotion
  • Trauma-aware mentorship
  • Consistent accountability
What We Build

Build

The lawful identity and skills that replace what the gang provided:

  • Pro-social identity
  • Emotional regulation
  • Healthy beliefs
  • Life skills
  • Purpose and belonging

Interrupting without building is just suppression — and suppression fails the moment a young person returns to old pressures. Building without interrupting leaves the old thinking in place to undo the new skills. That's why we do both, held together by trust.

One continuum, one relationship

From first contact to twelve months after release.

Each phase builds on the one before it. Trust is established before youth are asked to open up, intensive work deepens before release, and support continues through the return home — when the pressure is highest and most programs have already left.

Phase I

Engagement & Readiness

Facility-wide

Earning trust and reading readiness. The mentor becomes a consistent, recognizable presence before anyone is asked to do hard personal work.

  • Consistent, rapport-first contact
  • Group workshops that introduce the language of change
  • De-escalation support across the whole unit
  • Warm hand-off into one-on-one work when a youth is ready
Phase II

Intensive Intervention

Individualized

Weekly one-on-one work where the curriculum meets the young person's real history, needs, and goals.

  • Weekly individual sessions
  • SMART goals across school, work, family, safety, health, and self-control
  • Focused work on emotional regulation, core beliefs, and accountability
  • Education, career, and life planning — a future to walk toward
Phase III

Community Reintegration

12 months post-release

The phase most programs skip — and the one that matters most. Support continues for a full year, through the moment the old environment is pulling hardest.

  • Weekly coaching that keeps the relationship and plan alive
  • Rapid response when risk spikes
  • Monthly family home visits in the community
  • Practical help with school, work, peers, and family
Trust comes firstYouth open up only after trust is built. A relationship that starts and stops never reaches the real work.
Depth before releaseThe intensive work has to deepen before a youth goes home — not after the pressure has already hit.
Support at the riskiest momentThe first months after release carry the highest risk. Support has to be strongest exactly when it usually disappears.
Consistency protects changeLong-term consistency — not a one-time program — is what protects change long enough to become identity.

Across every phase

Six supports that never leave.

Whatever phase a young person is in, the same six supports follow them. They're not separate programs — they're one integrated relationship delivered over time.

Trusted adult connection

A consistent, gang-literate mentor who does not disappear when things get hard.

Identity & belief work

Separating the survival role from the chosen self; rewriting the beliefs underneath the behavior.

Emotional regulation tools

Practical, trauma-aware skills for the moment before the old reaction takes over.

Communication & leadership

Skills to set boundaries, repair harm, and lead without fear or control.

Education & career planning

A concrete lawful pathway — credits, training, opportunity — that competes with street options.

Structure, support & accountability

Routines, follow-through, and honest accountability that restores agency instead of shame.

Doctrine for the field

Built on the Real Ones Rising Field Manual.

The name is deliberate. A textbook is read; a field manual is carried. Ours is a full root-to-replacement curriculum — the model, a 31-unit curriculum (18 core and 13 supplemental units), facilitator standards, research foundations, and field tools — written to be used on a porch, not memorized for an exam.

At its heart is the person-in-environment lens from social work: for every youth, we read the person (history, identity, trauma, strengths), the environment (family, peers, neighborhood, school, systems), and the fit between them — and we intervene at both ends. It works alongside a second guiding framework — the military–gang parallel from our research synthesis Brothers in Arms, Brothers on the Block — which maps the structural parallels between military service and gang membership and asks what a real transition infrastructure looks like for a young person exiting gang life. The model is the map. The youth's environment is the terrain. The credible messenger is the one who walks it.

On the ground

Rooted in the communities we serve.

We partner with families, schools, probation, hospitals, and reentry programs across California's Central Valley, Central Coast, and Bay Area — going to the people and places where intervention actually changes outcomes.

And the work doesn't end at reentry. We're building pipelines out of the program — developing relationships with labor unions, higher education, fire and conservation career tracks, and peer-support certification, so that leaving the program means walking into something.

Why it works

The proof is the person in front of you.

Rapport first. Assess after trust. Teach the why. Restore the want. Train the how. Reinforce the new identity through consistency.

Real Ones Rising was founded by people who came up through the same streets and systems this work now serves. That lived experience isn't a side note — it's the whole point. When the person offering a way forward has stood exactly where you're standing, the message lands differently.

The Foundation exists to make that work fundable and accountable. We raise and steward charitable gifts and grants; direct services are delivered by Real Ones Rising LLC, our program partner, under an arm's-length program agreement. Two entities, one mission — with an independent board keeping every dollar accountable.

Silas KanadyActing Executive Director
Dr. Fredrika AtkinsBoard President
Susan Vidalon-SuzukiVice President & Development Committee Chair
Lauren KanadySecretary & Director of Communications
Javier BenitezTreasurer

Stand with us

There's a place for you in this work.

Whether you're a foundation program officer, a donor, or someone who believes people deserve a second chance — here's how you plug in.

Grant

Foundations & grantmakers

Fund a county, a phase, or the whole continuum. We come with a logic model, an outcome measurement plan, and a program delivered by credible messengers.

Start a conversation →
Serve

Board & committees

Lend your expertise — governance, development, finance, law. Our independent board and committees are where community leaders shape this work.

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Give

Fund the work

Every dollar puts a credible messenger beside a young person and keeps that relationship alive from first contact through the year after release.

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Start a conversation

Tell us how you want to show up.

Grant officers, donors, volunteers, partners — pick the one that fits and write us directly. No forms, no waiting on a robot.

Foundation & grant funding Fund a county, a phase, or the whole continuum. Board & committees Governance, development, finance, law. Making a gift Give, or ask how giving works before the 501(c)(3) lands. Partnership or referral Agencies, schools, unions, reentry partners. Something else Press, speaking, or a question that doesn't fit a box.

Each one opens your email app, addressed to us with the subject filled in. Or just call.

Email

silas@realonesrising.org

Phone

(415) 416-7881

Follow

@realonesrisingllc on Instagram — the work as it happens.

Where we work

Merced & Monterey counties — Central Valley, Central Coast & Bay Area, California.

For grantmakers

Ask and we'll send the logic model, outcome measurement plan, and county-level budget.