About us

Adam and Raquel Shipp - Sacramento Youth Center

Our Story

Co-Founders Adam and Raquel Shipp had worked for many years in local public schools providing award winning after school programs.

They used their experiences being ESL teachers and administrators in Kenya to connect with Refugee students on High School campuses. They increased their after-school program attendance from 2 students to 80 students.

They started to experience 2 big problems:

The places they were meeting were not places the youth wanted to be in.
As the after-school program began to make an impact, students began to have limited availability to meet on the days Adam and Raquel were on campus.

One day while walking into a program class, Adam asked one of their most consistent students Sam if he was joining. Sam said no. Adam didn’t need to ask why. The classroom we were teaching in was not inviting. Sam then followed up with, I want to come to your next event though.

This is the day the idea of the Youth Center was born!

A place where students could access quality mentoring any day of the week, and a space where our formal mentoring class could seamlessly move into where the real mentoring happens - in the margins. During a game of ping pong, or Fortnite, or just chilling on a couch.

How it started…

The Shipps had been residents of Del Paso Heights area for over 16 years. In that time they saw the need, the lack of resources for transitional age youth. They loved Del Paso Blvd and wanted that to be the home of SYC.

In 2019 SYC was founded by the Shipps. Since then, we have served over 1,000 students and grew from a small office with half a ping pong table and a tv hooked up to nothing, to a 15,000 square foot building…