The city of Richmond knows itself. We’ve seen it all before — great booms, big busts, the ebb and flow of a diverse community — and learned from our experiences. The only way forward these days is to move with intention in this ever-shrinking world. At East Brother Beer, we take pride in our great city and its storied history and go forward with purpose towards a bright future.
It’s Richmond’s people that steer this ship. An intrepid group of community-builders who are dead-set on a future for Richmond as rich as its past. With Pride and Purpose they build our community and with Pride and Purpose we tell their stories.
PRIDE & PURPOSE: RICHMOND PROMISE
How do you ensure the future of your community? That’s a massive question that the Richmond City Council wrangled with head-on before creating Richmond Promise, an initiative to build a college graduating culture in the city. And that mission is carried out in part by Jessie Stewart and the Richmond Promise team.
Jessie and her team work together to push the initiatives of Richmond Promise. Still, they have a lot of buy-in from the city—the organization was founded by the city council in partnership with the Chevron Richmond Refinery, after all.
The goals of Richmond Promise are both simple and complex. They want to foster an environment where attending college is possible, and they do so in several different ways. “There are two main barriers to college success for students. One is financial. The second is everything else,” Jessie states. Richmond Promise works within the community to provide monetary assistance to its scholars—which is especially critical in the Bay Area, where, as Jessie points out, “there’s a geographical disparity in postsecondary access and attainment in our community.”
That touches on the second part of their mission: the “everything else” of their organization. Richmond Promise is looking to tear down disparities in access to information and educational opportunities, which are incredibly stark in a place like Northern California. “The Bay Area is one of the wealthiest places in the world ...San Francisco is one of the places where there are the most Bachelor's degrees per capita and there is no reason the same should not, and cannot be true right here in Richmond,” Jessie notes.
Richmond Promise starts early—they work with local middle schools to build awareness and build college literacy as a norm. Along with helping students navigate the college application process and secure financial assistance, Richmond Promise also helps build students up to be successful once they get to college. “70% of our students are the first in their family to go to college,” Jessie shares, which means that some of the curveballs and struggles of attending college might be missed or overlooked—it’s not just enough to get students into school.
Jessie and the Richmond Promise team provide continued support through their robust mentoring program, where former Richmond Promise scholars mentor younger students. And students are excited to support their fellow Richmond citizens. “One of our students at UC Berkeley said, ‘You know, I can see somebody in a Richmond t-shirt on campus, and I’m like, yes. I might not even know them, but I know that we’re here and we’re seen,’” Jessie says.
Community engagement is critical to the work of Richmond Promise—and part of what makes Richmond Promise so unique. “Investing in education is critical for long term community health and equity in our community,” Jessie says. “And so when we think about our long term strategy, it’s really beyond providing scholarships. It's really around investing in young people now to cultivate a home-grown leadership network for Richmond that can shape the trajectory of the city for years to come.”
In a way, Richmond Promise is a manifestation of the city’s commitment to its future. “Our mission is much bigger than one organization,” Jessie states. Not only do they work with students, but they work with community groups, schools, churches, public institutions, and all touchpoints of a student’s life that can affect future outcomes. “Our vision is not to be an isolated program. It's intended to be a catalyst for building a college-going and graduating culture throughout the city, which again, is going to be done in collaboration and not in isolation.”
With a few years of running Richmond Promise under their belt—and multiple cohorts of students that have gone through their mentorship and guidance—Jessie and her team are thinking about the future.
“We're thinking about what happens after college. We’re thinking about employers and career paths and career preparation. The next phase is acknowledging the ‘why’ of the degree—and supporting our Scholars to enter the workforce in a career field of their choice.” says Richmond Promise alum and current manager of college/career success, Cynthia Ramirez-Parra.
Cynthia knows first-hand the importance of addressing the primary barriers to students’ success: affordability, awareness, access, and success. “Offering [programs like] the Braven Career Booster, Career Mentorship Program, and Career Coffee Chats helped me establish the professional relationships needed to gain the knowledge, social capital, and guidance that many of my peers and I didn’t have—not because we don’t want to, but because as first generation college students we are navigating it solely on our own.”
As more and more students graduate from Richmond Promise’s programming, Jessie and the team think a lot about what the organization will look like without them—which to some might sound daunting but to them is the ultimate symbol of success. “Our programming is already student-led and student-driven,” Jessie says, “We employ our college students to do the mentoring and support our students through the summer. But, when our Scholars are running and shaping the promise, that will embody our mission in action.”
One key manifestation of the Richmond Promise student-driven mission is the organization’s hiring of Near-Peer Ambassadors. This team of 10 Richmond Promise scholars supports current Richmond 12th graders in identifying their post-graduation options, completing important financial aid applications, and transitioning into the RP scholarship program itself. This work, as well as the Ambassadors’ hosting of college preparedness workshops to 9th graders across the school district, perfectly represents the RP team’s dream of building an extensive support system for Richmond youth that is entirely sustained by students who once walked the very same high school corridors.
All of this goes back to investing in the future of the community. “We feel like our mission will be actualized when Richmond Promise scholars are running the Richmond Promise, are sitting on the City Council, and in leadership roles across the community” Jessie shares. “And if we really want to realize our mission, we have to build up the next generation of leaders.”
