On the corner of 86th Avenue and International Boulevard, across the street from Allen Temple Baptist Church and the Boys and Girls Club, a \u201csanctuary\u201d for young people is coming to life.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The Young People\u2019s Wellness Center, a project of Roots Community Health, has broken ground, with the expectation that it will open in 2026. The goal is to provide confidential health care services, along with safe social spaces and workforce development opportunities, exclusively for 13- to 26-year-olds. That age range was selected, Roots CEO Dr. Noha Aboelata said, as the health center will become the only one in East Oakland focused on that age group.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cThere are too many cliffs that our young people are prone to falling off,\u201d Aboelata said during a groundbreaking event on Wednesday. \u201cThey leave the school setting, they graduate, or they become disconnected from school. They drop out. At 18, they fall off with certain benefits, or at 21 or 24. Because of the way our resources and systems are set up, young people fall through the gaps.\u201d<\/p>\n
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Dr. Noha Aboelata, the CEO of Roots Community Health, celebrates the completion of the first phase of fundraising for the Young People\u2019s Wellness Center. Roots is hoping to raise another $3.2 million for five years of programming and services. Credit: Ashley McBride\/The Oaklandside<\/p>\n
The center will offer physical and mental health services, sexual and reproductive healthcare, and substance use treatment. Plans also include a cafe and a makerspace, as well as a pop-up barber and salon. On Friday and Saturday nights, the center will stay open until 10 p.m., said Aquil Naji, the chief operations officer at Roots, \u201cso that our children don\u2019t have to be at the bus stops or on the streets.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is not a project where we\u2019re trying to make money,\u201d Naji said. \u201cWe\u2019re trying to build an asset to hand back over to our community.\u201d<\/p>\n
Wednesday\u2019s groundbreaking marked the end of the first phase of the project, during which Roots and its partners raised $2.3 million for construction from private companies and foundations. In the second phase, Roots hopes to raise $3.2 million more to fund the first five years of programming and counseling services. Civic and community leaders gathered at 8600 International Blvd., a warehouse that once housed artists and before that, repossessed cars, to participate in the ceremonial dirt shoveling.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cWe know this is an area that has been disinvested in generationally, and what better way to say that we\u2019re standing up for our beautiful young people than by saying we\u2019re going to create a sanctuary space for you,\u201d Mia Bonta, the state assemblymember representing Oakland and other parts of the East Bay, said at the event. \u201cA place where you can thrive, where you can get health care that you need, where you can have the conversations that you need to so that you can have agency and power over your body.\u201d<\/p>\n
Major funders of the project include BMO Commercial Bank, which gave a $1 million gift, as well as the Stupski Foundation, Fremont Bank, and the East Bay Community Foundation.<\/p>\n
The Young People\u2019s Wellness Center is a part of the Rise East initiative<\/a>, an ambitious $100 million plan to revitalize a 40-by-40 block of East Oakland by investing in health, education, workforce, safety, and housing. Roots Community Health is a member of the 40\u00d740 Council, which is spearheading the project with Oakland Thrives<\/a>.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m a parent of five kids and I know one thing for sure is that young people do not really care about what we say to them as much as what we show them,\u201d said Greg Hodge, the CEO of the Brotherhood of Elders Network, another member organization of the 40\u00d740 Council. \u201cThis building is us showing our young people that we care about their well-being, their safety, their health, their fun, and their recreation.\u201d<\/p>\n “*” indicates required fields<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"On the corner of 86th Avenue and International Boulevard, across the street from Allen Temple Baptist Church and…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":18662,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[9858,1570,143,145,144,15673,15674],"class_list":["post-18661","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-oakland","tag-east-oakland","tag-health","tag-oakland","tag-oakland-headlines","tag-oakland-news","tag-rise-east","tag-roots-community-health"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18661","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18661"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18661\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/18662"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18661"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18661"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18661"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}