HOLLA Mentors Black and Brown Youth
I love myself / I love my skin / I love my hair / My melanin
And when I lose / Was born to win / I never quit / Just try again
When I look in the mirror, what do I see?
I can be anything I wanna be
When I look in the mirror, what do I see?
I can be anything I wanna be
I am strong / I am smart / I am nice / I use my heart
I believe in myself, I don’t play / So I say this in the mirror every day
I love myself / I love my skin / I love my hair / My melanin
Organizational History
Justice Reinvestment Equity Program grantee HOLLA is a grassroots mentorship movement whose mission is to change the narrative of youth of color through culturally responsive relationships. HOLLA connects with families, administrators, teachers, and nonprofits to recognize and uplift the power and potential of Black and Brown youth.
HOLLA’s name pays homage to Tupac Shakur’s 1993 song, “Holler if Ya Hear Me.” “HOLLA'' means to call attention to something and an invitation to engage. We are calling attention to the power and potential of Black, Brown and Indigenous youth by engaging them from their specific cultural context. We desire that all youth of color are fully seen, heard, and valued for being authentically themselves.
When HOLLA’s founder and executive director, Eric Knox, moved back to Portland after 10 years of living in LA, he discovered that the historically Black neighborhoods of Northeast Portland had become significantly gentrified. Many of the displaced students and families had been pushed to the outskirts of the city to outer Southeast Portland. These students were pushed out of communities that had been home for generations, surrounded by a different cultural landscape without representation or cultural understanding and without role models of color in their schools.
Eric founded HOLLA in 2013 to address this lack of representation by organizing mentors of color to engage relationally with students. Eric knows that for students to be successful, it is critical they feel represented by the adults in their lives, as well as for those adults to reflect and amplify the students’ culture. 100% of HOLLA program staff and 69% of HOLLA volunteer mentors identify as people of color.
HOLLA’s Work
HOLLA currently supports 80 Black and Brown K-12 students through culturally specific and culturally responsive mentoring and education in the East Portland metro area. HOLLA’s mentorship programs include one-on-one community-based mentorship, as well as campus-based mentors who work in schools in outer Southeast Portland to provide representation and culturally honoring relationships to students. HOLLA staff and HOLLA volunteer mentors walk side by side with students both in and out of school, providing opportunities for enrichment through athletics, arts, aviation, outdoor activities and college preparation. But the focus isn’t just on the kids. Relationships with mentors are equally important to HOLLA, and the organization spends time supporting ongoing leadership development and community building with volunteer mentors throughout the year.
Mentors commit to seeing their mentees on a weekly basis, a minimum of four hours a month during or after school. HOLLA provides regular prosocial enrichment events once to twice a month for mentors, mentees and their families to have fun, engage with different perspectives and try something new together.
How HOLLA will Benefit from JREP
HOLLA also works to interrupt the cycle of adverse childhood experiences, like growing up in a low-income household or having an incarcerated parent, that too often leads to imprisonment. With Justice Reinvestment Equity Program funds, HOLLA will be able to scale a robust violence prevention plan that includes relationship-building and healthy options for young people to flourish and tap into their full potential.
Over the next two years, with the support of JREP, HOLLA will:
Increase the number of youth served via mentorship: 20 additional students in year one, 20 in year two
Hire a full-time Campus Coordinator who will be present at HOLLA School and partner schools to offer a familiar, supportive presence to students and their families and strengthen participants’ mentorship experience
Build HOLLA’s organizational capacity, including advancing the data skills of the HOLLA team, establishing internal policies, trying new mentor recruitment strategies and more
Why Culturally Responsive Mentoring?
According to the Wilder Research Foundation, which has analyzed the social return on investment in youth mentoring programs, the impact of mentoring is significant. Mentorship leads to improved school attendance and performance, reduced truancy, improved health outcomes, reduced juvenile crime (both violence and property crimes), reduced costs of adult crime and reduced needs for social services.
Welcome HOLLA, to the JREP cohort! Thank you for the work you do to support young Black, Brown and Indigenous students.
The Justice Reinvestment Equity Program (JREP) supports culturally specific organizations and culturally responsive services in communities most harmed and least helped by Oregon’s criminal legal system. JREP seeks to elevate organizations that have been overlooked by traditional funding streams with the goals of reducing incarceration and racial disparities in the criminal legal system, promoting healing and advancing community safety in Oregon. Learn more about JREP.