Grantee Spotlight: Gilroy Youth Impact Center
Crosspost from The Sobrato Organization
We recently sat down with Diane Ortiz, CEO of Youth Alliance to learn more about the collaborative building acquisition and launch of the Gilroy Youth Impact Center. Sobrato Philanthropies is thrilled to have the opportunity to support Youth Alliance’s vision of a youth-centered economic mobility hub and a community space for Gilroy youth to build culture and power.
“We're so excited about this effort,” Diane shared. “The Gilroy Youth Impact Center will be a hub for young people and families, specifically in East Gilroy.”
In this area of South Santa Clara County, the Gilroy community has been generationally impacted by underinvestment. The Center will not only serve as a physical location for young people and families to gather, but will also provide youth with supportive “cradle to career” resources. These will likely include access to drop-in programs for youth leadership, career development, and empowerment programs.
“Most importantly, it will be a hub for the community to gather, to find connection and belonging. We believe it will be catalytic for the Gilroy community to have a physical hub, not only for young people to feel safe and seen, but a place that is theirs and run by them.”
The Center will also serve as a program space for BIPOC-led organizations to utilize. “We’ve heard from similar organizations like ours that they have been very concerned with displacement,” she said. “With inflation, high cost of rent, many youth serving organizations have been unable to find an accessible long-term space to provide vital resources for youth… We hope the Center will serve as a space for all.” Diane shared that Youth Alliance’s long-term goal is to eventually increase the Center’s footprint so that more organizations might be able to offer programming and increased resources – opening up possibilities for coalition and power building, collaborative impact, and ensuring a stronger community.
The Gilroy Youth Impact Center has been a dream shared by several partners of Youth Alliance for some time now, including Digital NEST, which creates sustainable and scalable technology learning centers for Latinx youth, and the Latino Family Fund, a donor-advised fund of the Gilroy Community Foundation that ensures investments in Latino priorities, nonprofit organizations, and social issues.