Youth Development & Leadership
The goal of MOCHA’s Community Futures School (CFS) is to prepare youth (ages 14-17) to be resourceful and contributing citizens of the future through community engagement and art making. Activities will take place at MOCHA’s downtown Oakland facility, at Oakland Public Library sites, on Oakland Unified School District (OUSD) sites, and at community settings that will facilitate youth-led PORCH TALKs. Annual youth internship cohorts will look at existing social structures to revise paths that will lead the human race to a more equitable future; and will add their voices to the evolution and transformation of power structures.
Racial unrest during the Summer of 2020 agitated years old feelings of anti-Blackness in Oakland and beyond. Mocha’s leadership felt that the methods in which societal conditions and topics were internalized and communicated needed to be updated. Centered on Blackness, the Porch Talk series is a quarterly experience that teaches young people from minoritized communities to research, organize and lead conversations rooted in topics based on their current lived experiences.
Held on a quarterly basis, Porch Talks allow for honest conversations about Anti Blackness that intersect in a multi gendered, multicultural and multigenerational manner.
