9/25 6;00-8:00PM

Dear Community Partners,

Please join us on Friday, September 25, as the Rise East 40x40 Youth Advisory Council hosts its Implementation Partner Announcement and Kickoff Party.

This event marks an important step in the Youth Navigation and Exposure Tours initiative. Our young people helped review proposals, hear presentations, ask critical questions, and select the organizations they believe can move this work forward. During the evening, they will share what has been achieved so far and introduce the implementation partners who will lead this work over the next year.

We hope you will come out to celebrate and support these young leaders as they help turn their ideas and decisions into action across East Oakland.

9/27 11:00A.M-1:00PM

Oakland Tech Week Is Coming to East Oakland, Y'all.

AI as a Human Multiplier, Building the Rise East Youth Navigation App, With Youth in the Lead.

Join EOBA and CARLI for a Brunch and Learn about what changes when the people who will use a technology help lead its development from the beginning.

Members of the Rise East 40x40 Youth Advisory Council are helping guide the development of the Youth Navigation and Exposure App. During this panel discussion, youth leaders and the app developers will share how they are working together to turn lived experience into product requirements, features, trust standards, data decisions, and testing priorities.

Great products fail when builders misunderstand the people who will use them. This event offers technology professionals, funders, designers, engineers, researchers, nonprofit leaders, and community partners a live case study in user-led product development.

Attendees will hear how East Oakland youth are identifying access barriers, setting priorities, and deciding what will make the app useful, safe, relevant, and trustworthy. The conversation will examine how transportation challenges and fragmented information affect the user journey, how peer trust influences adoption, and how youth decision-making changes the development process.

Many young people trust information that has been shared and validated by other young people. Their peers understand their language, daily experiences, transportation concerns, safety needs, and the difference between a program that looks good online and one that truly welcomes them.

Bringing Oakland Tech Week to East Oakland recognizes the talent, creativity, knowledge, and leadership that already exist here. East Oakland deserves access to technology investment, career pathways, partnerships, and a meaningful role in determining what gets built. Our young people bring valuable knowledge to product development because they understand their community and the barriers families face.

The user has changed the game. We can no longer build for young people and ask for their opinions after the major decisions have been made. We have to build with them and give them real authority throughout the process.

Come for brunch, meet the youth and developers behind the project, and leave with a practical model for building technology with users.

Sunday, September 27, 2026.

11:00 AM to 1:00 PM.

East Oakland Boxing Association.

816 98th Avenue, Oakland.

Free parking, brunch, and refreshments included.

10/5 3:30-7:00PM

October 5 is World Teachers Day.

Before you think about the date, think about a teacher.

Think about the teacher whose name you still remember. The teacher who saw something in you before you knew how to see it in yourself. The teacher who encouraged you, corrected you, challenged you, protected you, or simply made you feel like you mattered..

That is the power of a teacher.

Teachers shape lives in ways they may never fully see. A child may leave their classroom and carry one sentence, one act of kindness, one moment of encouragement, for the next 40 or 50 years.

Yet we ask these same teachers to do something that should trouble all of us. We ask them to spend their own money to give our children the basic supplies they need to learn.

Paper. Pencils. Crayons. Markers. Notebooks. Classroom materials.

Why should the person we trust to educate our children have to reach into their own paycheck to make sure those children have what they need?

That is why JTA Foundation, Kerosene Lamp Foundation, and East Oakland Boxing Association are coming together for Supply the Future on World Teachers Day.

This is our opportunity to give something back.

You may be wondering how you can help.

Bring a box of crayons. Donate construction paper. Drop off notebooks, pens, pencils, folders, or classroom supplies. Ask your company if there are unopened office supplies sitting in a storage room that can be put to good use. Make a contribution. Or simply come by and say thank you to an educator.

You do not have to make a huge gesture.

You just have to show up.

Because every donation says, we see you.

Every box of supplies says, you should not have to do this alone.

And every child who watches a community support its teachers learns something too. They learn that we value the people who educate them. They learn that service matters. They learn that taking care of one another matters.

On October 5, we invite you to help us give something back to the teachers who are shaping the next generation right now.