Collective Climb
This organization has already been registered
Someone in your organization has already registered and setup an account. would you like to join their team?Profile owner : i**o@c*************b.o*g
Mission Statement
Collective Climb is a community-based nonprofit empowering primarily BIPOC teenagers (15-19) in Philadelphia through four programs: 1) The Restorative Community Project, 2) a Youth Advisory Board, 3) Collective Kickbacks, and 4) a Restorative Justice Diversion Program. We are committed to Black joy, security, and freedom.
About This Cause
“Climb a good tree and we will rise,” so goes the Akan proverb. It tells us that with the right tools, communities can work together to overcome adversity. Embodying this mantra, Collective Climb is a Black-led 501c3 organization empowering BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, People of Color) teenagers and young adults in West Philadelphia through restorative justice. Our programs equip young people as organizers, restorative practitioners, and community leaders prepared to redress past harms and move their community closer to realizing Black joy, security, and freedom. We begin with our Youth Restorative Justice Diversion Program. In collaboration with the Philadelphia District Attorney’s Office, we have developed a referral system to process cases of youth who have committed felony level harm in the University of Pennsylvania’s jurisdiction. Our intervention, based on the proven prescriptions of national Restorative Justice organization Impact Justice, creates critical healing spaces for youth and the person harmed to pursue reconciliation outside of the punitive system. Once the conference is complete, we continue to work with diverted youth to respond to delinquency that is often more accurately called trauma-response. We encourage them to join our Restorative Community Project to unlearn old patterns and gain skills to transform their future. Then, the Restorative Community Project (RCP) pays 10 youth (recruited from our diversion program and West Philadelphia neighborhood high schools) $450 to embrace restorative mental models through a robust 32-hour training facilitated during a nature-based retreat. For many of our participants this is the first time they have ever even left the city limits. Once youth return to Philadelphia, the youth embark on 12 sessions over 3 months to conduct a participatory action research project. Through this program, we give our youth four fruits: violence prevention, anti-oppression education, post-secondary readiness, and a platform for them to shape justice movements in their community. Finally, we have found that our young people complete the Restorative Community Project with a desire to do more. They leave with a sense of urgency to transform their newly acquired knowledge into action. In response, we built the Youth Advisory Board, a 6-month fellowship compensating them $900 to organize events for their neighbors and shape the future direction of Collective Climb. In addition to a personal stipend for their labor, they receive a $2,000 budget to organize said events (called Collective Kickbacks). Through this Advisory Board, we aim to show our youth that they are enough. With the brilliant minds of the young people guiding our work, Collective Climb will spark a culture of healing, not harm in the broader community through our existing programs and future diversionary effort. This new decade marks the official beginning of the climb, but our vision is a continuation of our ancestors’ dreams.