A Pathway for Youth to Grow—and for Funders to Learn

JaMel Perkins & Natasha Dolby

This story is part of the Architects of Impact series, highlighting stories of innovation that demonstrate how our Community is mobilizing to ensure a world that works for all people and the planet.

There’s a corner of the Bay Area that feels different today—not because of a shiny new building, but because young people who once felt invisible now feel seen. At the HYPE Center, they walk through the doors and know the place was designed for them. There’s warmth. There’s trust. And behind it all is something quietly radical: a team of leaders who started not with answers, but with questions.

Forward Global members Natasha Dolby and JaMel Perkins, along with their co-founder Alia Whitney-Johnson, didn’t start their organization, Freedom Forward, to impose a solution to youth exploitation. Instead, they listened, asked the youth what they needed, identified what wasn’t working, and co-created what a space designed by them could look and feel like. Then they went to work—side by side with young people, community partners, and public systems—to build something that didn’t just fill a gap for vulnerable youth, but changed the game entirely on how they felt when they were accessing services.

At nearly 10 years old, Freedom Forward is a leader in transforming systems that serve Bay Area youth and prevent their exploitation. This includes their work at the HYPE Center, violence prevention campaigns, and a new model for placing highly vulnerable kids differently within the local foster care system. 

Freedom Forward emerged from the ethos that real change happens when those closest to the problem help shape the solution. Their partnerships with the people they serve—rooted in mutual respect, different life experiences, and shared conviction—has become a model for how collaborative leadership can scale trust into impact.

From Different Paths, a Shared Purpose

Natasha Dolby came to this work with a global perspective. Born in Brazil and educated in the U.S., she has a background in education, storytelling, and philanthropy, shaped by time in both grassroots and institutional settings. She helped fund and advise initiatives focused on gender equity and social justice in different settings over the years. But when it came to the issue of youth exploitation in her own backyard, she knew her role wasn’t to lead with money or knowledge, but with curiosity.

JaMel Perkins brought decades of community-rooted experience. A long-time activist and Bay Area advocate, she had worked across issues including domestic violence, women’s empowerment, and youth homelessness. Her realization that sex trafficking wasn’t solely a “global” problem, but a local one—impacting young people in San Francisco and Oakland—was a galvanizing moment. “I assumed it was an international issue,” she says. “Then I learned that most exploited youth here are American-born, and that 65 percent have been in our child welfare systems and foster care. Then I knew it was time to act.”

Rooted in a shared mission and cultivated at Forward Global, their partnership grew out of aligned values: deep listening, humility, and the belief that youth are not just service recipients—they are experts on their own lives.

Youth Voice, Not Youth Outreach

Freedom Forward wasn’t built on a traditional nonprofit playbook. It was built around a different question: what would it look like if young people who had experienced sexual exploitation or compounding vulnerabilities that made them likely to be exploited help design the solutions meant to serve them?

Natasha, JaMel, and Alia brought young people to the table from the start. Through their Forward Fellows program and a Youth Advisory Board, they elevated young leaders’ voices in the design of services, policies, and public spaces. That early engagement led to the co-creation of the HYPE Center, which stands for Helping Young People Elevate, a first-of-its-kind drop-in space created in direct partnership with the youth it supports. In fact, the name was selected by the youth as well as the guiding principles of the center, and the agreements that govern the space were all discussed and written by the youth.

“The design goal,” JaMel says, “was to amplify the voices of youth who are often ignored.”

Open to any young people ages 14-24, the HYPE Center is a space for healing, connection, and hope. Most of the people they serve are unstably housed, unemployed or marginally employed, and dealing with layered adversities. Designed for and by young people, it serves as a community center, home base, pantry, career center, and more. “Changing the trajectory of a life is no small impact,” Natasha says. “It’s not necessarily the what we’re doing, but the how.”

From Listening to Scaling

Freedom Forward does not limit its focus to one project or one issue. From the HYPE Center to its family-based foster care program, an information campaign to prevent violence, and other intersectional initiatives, the organization’s programs address challenges at many levels, all with the goal of supporting and protecting youth.

Importantly, Natasha and JaMel understand that real systems change requires infrastructure and behavior change, not just inspiration. They therefore partner across local and state government, individual and corporate philanthropists, grassroots organizations, and others to create a community of practice.

Their collaborative approach also led them to unlock a $9 million state contract to coordinate services for youth at risk of exploitation in San Francisco. That kind of alignment—between community-rooted wisdom and government-scale resources—is what makes their work both sustainable and scalable.

This investment also unlocked dollars for a foster care pilot program with the state of California that is designed to set up both young people and foster families for better outcomes than the average state placement provides. With all the data they’ve collected, Natasha and JaMel believe it can be a powerful case study to show how local governments can effectively collaborate with community partners to protect young people with dignity and agency.

A Blueprint for Member-Led Change

For other members in our Community, the partnership between Natasha and JaMel offers a powerful blueprint:

• Start with listening. Deep, ongoing engagement with those most affected isn’t just respectful—it’s strategic. They spoke to other nonprofit organizations, funders, foster parents, and young people before they created a plan.
• Build with, not for. Success comes from co-creation, not top-down design.
• Patience and stamina: Dealing with government (local and state) requires a long-term perspective. There’s a learning curve in dealing with people who are naturally part of systems in positions of power. 

• Lead together. Partnerships thrive by bringing different strengths and lived experiences to the table.

Natasha and JaMel created something new— and they created something that lasts: a pathway for others to follow. For youth, they can plot a new way forward in life, with a community to support them along the way. For funders, there’s real-life inspiration for how to make effective systemic change that can transform lives and center humanity.