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OAKLAND KIDS FIRST
2024–2025 IMPACT REPORT
OAKLAND KIDS FIRST
2024–2025 IMPACT REPORT
From Our Executive Director
Lukas Brekke-Miesner, Executive Director of Oakland Kids First, reflects on a year that has highlighted the fragility and relative weakness of the institutions that hold our society intact. Recent attacks on public education, healthcare, housing and so much more have been pronounced and without sufficient push-back. It is this current assault on everyday people that Lukas insists should inspire each of us to step into community organizing like our youth are doing here in Oakland. This year 16 and 17 year-olds cast their first votes for School Board, organized campaigns to improve their bathrooms and fought to save critical afterschool funding. Let their spirit light the way to inspire the many fights in our future. It will take all of us to build communities and a country that values people over profit. Please click below to here Lukas’s thoughts.
About Oakland Kids First
Oakland Kids First (OKF) is a nonprofit dedicated to increasing youth voice, leadership, and power to create engaging and equitable public schools. We believe youth are the experts of their own experience and are uniquely equipped to evaluate, innovate, and improve the institutions that serve them.
2024–2025 Goals
GOAL 1: Build Youth Power Through Student Organizing
Provide positive youth development and organizing programs that prepare 160 Oakland public high school students to launch and lead campaigns designed to cultivate youth power and improve material conditions for students in the Oakland Unified School District.
GOAL 2: Prepare Students for College, Career and Community
As the lead agency of Castlemont High School, provide 575 East Oakland students with enrichment leadership development programs, academic support, and work-based learning opportunities.
GOAL 3: Launch Youth Voting in Alameda County
Continue to anchor the Oakland Youth Vote Coalition and work with various stakeholders to ensure 16 and 17 year-olds in Oakland & Berkeley can vote for School Board Directors in the 2024 elections. This would make Oakland the 1st major American city to institute youth vote.
IMPACT ACROSS OAKLAND
NO CUTS
OKF helped lead an organizing campaign to reverse devastating 50-85% cuts to after-school program budgets in OUSD.
OAKLAND YOUTH VOTE
Historic implementation of Oakland Youth Vote! The Bay Area is the largest region to include eligible 16 and 17 year old voters in their local school board elections.
0
16- and 17-year-olds pre-registered and were able to vote in odd numbered district school board elections in November.
0
students were enrolled in Oakland Kids First’s organizing programs and community school initiatives.
STUDENT JUSTICE PLATFORM
Youth organizers launched Student Justice Platform campaigns to improve safety, cleanliness and accessibility of bathrooms in 5 of the largest high schools in Oakland.
of participants rated their program experience with 5 or 4 stars out of 5.
0
%
I get to learn how to organize and bring awareness to issues about my school that affect me and my peers.
All the hard work on the campaign led up to that moment – I got to vote! And I’m proud to have an impact on future voters!
ASSESSING IMPACT GOALS
Goal 1 — Build Youth Power Through Student Organizing
180 surveyed REAL HARD participants and 23 YOC organizers indicated that OKF programs strengthened youth power, fostered collaboration, provided political education, activated base, and sustained engagement.
After participating in the program students believe:
The best part about the REAL HARD program is how it brings students together to work on real issues in our school. It feels good to be part of a team that’s actually trying to make a difference, not just talking about it. I also like that we get to research and come up with our own solutions, it helps me think more critically.
I fought for youth voting because it’s just fair for youth to have a say in decisions that directly impact them. I’m excited to vote when I turn 16, and I have three younger brothers who will now be able to vote in the future, too!
Goal 2 — Prepare Students for College, Career and Community
Through Knight Time, Knight Success, and Castle Cares programs, OKF provided 600 students with after-school support, college, career, and community readiness.
% Castlemont Students engaged in OKF Programs
88%
This program impacted me in a lot of ways but one of the biggest ways where the motivation that helped me show up to school more go to class and stay more consistent and work on the way I say things.
The impact this program had on me was learning and time management. Through this program I was able to gain a lot of support skills. Lastly I was able to build bonds.
It made me wanna start participating in school more. And also helped me do better in school, and wanna meet new people.
% of students that said the program helped them
Goal 3 — Launch Youth Voting in Alameda County
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1500 16- and 17-year-olds pre-registered and were able to vote in odd numbered district school board elections in November.
160 attended the only student-led OUSD School Board Candidate Forum planned by youth leaders.
- 75+ youth and community members joined a celebratory ballot drop at the Alameda County Courthouse.
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244 first-time 16- and 17-year-old voters cast ballots in Districts 1, 3, 5, and 7 school board elections.
It was incredible to witness the student leaders speak so authentically and passionately about voting – they had internalized it and made it their own.
It was incredibly rewarding to map out the election administration implementation steps for youth voting. I really believe – and evidence shows – that if you get a voter when they are young, you will have a voter for life.
Students know their own experience better than any adult or school board member. I saw voting as one piece of students having the power to fix problems at their schools and beyond.
Partner Organizations
- OUSD’s Expanded Learning Programs Office, All City Council Student Union, and election technologist
- OEA teachers’ union
- School sites: principals, teachers and linked learning academy pathway leads, School Site Councils (SSC), Coordination of Services Teams (COST), and school culture/climate committees.
- SSC and PTSAs to address school campaigns to improve bathroom accessibility, safety and cleanliness.
- BACR at Oakland Tech and Fremont high schools
- EBAYC at Oakland High School
- Youth Together at Skyline
- OUSD’s Restorative Justice (RJ) office
- Highland Hospital- HEAL Program
- East Oakland Youth Development Center- EOYDC
- Oakland Athletic League (OAL)
- Alameda College and California Department of Education Office of the Superintendent’s STEM program
- Social Good Fund fiscal sponsor and Sankofa- partner of the farm, garden and orchard
- Museum of Children’s Art (MOCHA)- Knight Painters community arts
Civic Design Studio and the Crucible- the FabLab - ANOVA volunteers from UC Berkeley provide- computer programming
- Children’s Hospital Oakland (CHO) Youth Wellness Advisory Board (YWAB)
- Elevate- Choir
- Bay Area Urban Debate League (BAUDL)
- YouthBeats
- Clínica de la Raza- Grupo de Jóvenes
- Youth Alive – Teens on Target
- Soccer Without Borders
- Youth Uprising
- Oakland Youth Vote (OYV) Coalition, and Core Leaders Committee partners:
- Oakland Youth Commission (OYC)
- OUSD’s All City Council Student Union (ACC)
- AYPAL
- Californians for Justice (CFJ)
- East Bay Community Foundation’s All Due Respect project steering committee exploring how to better support, compensate and sustain organizers.
- East Oakland Promise Neighborhood Rise East efforts
- Funders Collaborative on Youth Organizing (FCYO)’s Praxis for Power Lab. OKF’s Executive Director is on the advisory board steering committee.
- Oakland Promise- Oakland Children’s Initiative
- Walter & Elise Haas Sr. Endeavor Fund grantees
- Youth Organize! California’s Youth Power Fund network
Financial Overview
Revenue vs Expenses
Breakdown of FY 24-25 Revenue
Breakdown of FY 24-25 Expenses
24-25 Funders/Donors
- Akonadi Foundation
- Bay Area Community Resources
- City of Oakland- Department of Violence Prevention (DVP)
- City of Oakland- Oakland Fund for Children and Youth (OFCY)
- ETR Advancing Health Equity
- Evelyn & Walter Haas Jr. Fund
- Funders’ Collaborative on Youth Organizing (FCYO)
- Michael Jordan and Jordan Brand Community Grants Program: Jordan Black Community Commitment
- Oakland Children’s Initiative- Oakland Promise
- Oakland Public Education Fund
- Oakland Unified School District (OUSD)
- Radical Imagination Family Foundation (RIFF)
- Sandia National Laboratories
- Stupski Foundation
- San Francisco Foundation
- The California Endowment (TCE)
- UC SAREP- Sustainable Agriculture and Food Systems Small Grants Program
- W. Clement & Jessie V. Stone Foundation
- Walter & Elise Haas Sr. Endeavor Fund
- Warriors Community Foundation
- YO Cali Northern California grant makers- Youth Power Fund
- Zoom Cares
To all of the individuals who donated, volunteered and attended Oakland Kids First events – thank you! Your generosity helped OKF achieve our goals to serve more Oakland students and improve educational equity for the Oakland community.
Oakland Kids First is a 501(c)(3) tax exempt nonprofit
EIN 01-0594835
