LYNN — With 2024 coming to a close, Roca Lynn, which helps high-risk community youth, has a lot to be proud of.
Roca was founded in 1988 and has seven locations along the east coast, with five of those being in Massachusetts. Their Lynn location opened in 2016. Roca’s mission is to “be a relentless force in disrupting incarceration, poverty, and racism by engaging the young adults, police, and systems at the center of urban violence in relationships to address trauma, find hope, and drive change,” according to its website.
With support from government grants, such as the Safe & Successful Youth Initiative and the Gun Violence Protection Act, Roca Lynn serves young people in their late teens and early 20s. Their participants usually have some form of drug, gang, or criminal history, and lack connections with school or employment.
“No young person is too challenging to work with. If you can’t do another program, then Roca is the right program for you,” Emily Fish, assistant director of Roca Lynn, explained.
Roca Lynn Director Joe Furnari, also described their office as a secure environment that at-risk youth can always come to for help. “(At Roca Lynn) they’re comfortable, they’re safe. They know they can come here,” he said.
Roca Lynn offers a three-year program to their youth. This program can consist of many things, including courses designed to help them with High School Equivalency Tests, financial and computer literacy, and more. They also offer a transitional employment program, which Fish describes as “an intermediary step” between never working, and working regularly. The program has contracts with the Lynn and Salem Department of Public Works, and offers part-time job assignments to Roca youth.
All of Roca Lynn’s staff is also para professionally trained in Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT). According to Fish, CBT is a “huge backbone” of their program, and helps give their youth crucial emotional regulation skills to help them overcome past hardships.
“They’re facing really intense challenges, whether it’s being unhoused, violence in their home, gang violence, trauma from incarceration, trauma from childhood, any of these things,” she said.
In 2024, Roca Lynn has served 145 high-risk young men, with a 93% retention rate. More generally, for young men served by Roca across their Massachusetts locations between 2013 and 2022, of those who had been enrolled for 2 years or longer, 93% had no new arrests, and 100% had no new incarcerations.
While Roca Lynn originally started out only focusing on young men, as of two years ago they have also started serving young women. They also have a small playroom in their office, for people who have kids but still want to come in and take a class.
