Youth Leadership Programs

Building Bridges Leadership Academy (BBLA)

  • This is a training program for for 18+ adult allies who want to be volunteer facilitators for Building Bridges Youth programs.

    Facilitated by Confluence Rising (formerly CCEJ) staff and experienced volunteer facilitators, this program prepares new and returning volunteers to facilitate our youth programs.

Summer Youth Leadership Institute (SYLI)

  • This leadership institute offers an intensive training for students becoming Youth Leader staff at Building Bridges Camp.

    Participating students must have previously attended Building Bridges Camp. Students will attend a 3 day retreat and meet weekly for 5 weeks over the summer!

Building Bridges Camp

  • Building Bridges Camp is a unique three-day, overnight retreat that helps empower students to make more inclusive and just communities. Building Bridges Camp promotes self-respect, mutual respect, valuing differences, and working for justice. Students participate in interactive activities and dialogue sessions intended to increase their understanding of people's differences and of their personal responsibility in creating an inclusive school and community.

    We host a Racial Justice Camp and a Gender Justice Camp.

Conscious Classrooms

  • This is an in-school program for middle or high school youth focused on building awareness, knowledge, and skills students need to promote respect, advocate for social justice, and strengthen the learning environment in classrooms and schools.

    We offer a FREE 3-day Facilitator Training at our office, followed by practice sessions.

Restorative Youth Diversion

  • Healing Harms offers a Restorative Justice Youth Diversion program created as an alternative to the juvenile justice system for youth 17 and under that have been charged with a crime and those who were harmed by that action.

    Our program provides youth with intensive case management over multiple sessions, supporting them in reaching several key goals: building an understanding of the reasons for their harmful actions, exploring any potential impact their actions had on others, planning for future success, and practicing accountability to the people they harmed. This multistep process culminates in a dialogue, circle, or family discussion where the youth responsible for causing harm meets with anyone negatively impacted by their actions in order to take accountability and make the situation as right as possible.

Youth Leadership Workshops

  • We can create customized Youth Leadership Workshops for your organization’s youth that support young people in discussing social justice topics.

    These workshops seek to tap into the inherent power of youth and equip them with skills to make change in their schools and communities at large!

Curious about bringing Confluence Rising’s (formerly CCEJ) Youth Leadership programs to your school or organization? Want to cultivate adult allyship?

Read our Youth Leadership Menu of Services to learn about:

  • Customized Youth Leadership Workshops

  • Conscious Classrooms Units

  • Technical Assistance & Coaching Services

  • Customized Adult Allyship in Action Workshops

Contact us to get more information!

Key Team Members

  • Nupur B.

    Restorative Justice Specialist

  • Vanessa Coover

    Restorative Justice Specialist

  • Shaune Gatlin

    Program Director of Healing Harms

  • Trisha Herrera

    Youth Leadership Coordinator

  • Serena Padilla

    Director of Building Bridges for Youth

  • Nicole Taylor

    Community & Schools Engagement Coordinator

  • April Van Ligten

    Vice President of Youth Leadership