2026 Grantee Spotlight: Gilroy Youth Impact Center
“We need a place that’s ours.” — FROM ONE OF THE YOUNG COMMUNITY LEADERS NURTURED BY YOUTH ALLIANCE
We are delighted to celebrate a milestone of one of our community partners, Youth Alliance, as they begin the build-out and renovation of the Gilroy Youth Impact Center.
Sobrato Philanthropies is proud to be one of the seed investors in this new landmark — a permanent space of safety, healing, power-building, and career opportunity for the youth of South Santa Clara County. Taking up the footprint of the former Bank of America building on Monterrey Road in east Gilroy, the Center will be a haven the young people of the region have long dreamed of and now have the opportunity to enjoy.
Youth Alliance CEO Diane Ortiz shares her thoughts with construction planning in full swing.
The Gilroy Youth Impact Center represents a historic step towards changing the systems that negatively impact the communities of South Santa Clara County — with a physical space that will permanently signal hope, safety, potential, opportunity, and power.
What strikes me most at this moment is the achievement of overcoming the many hurdles of owning and building out a space — vetting properties, securing permits, compiling endless iterations of construction budgets, negotiating payment structures — each has always been an act of collective thinking, collective visioning, and collective power. That’s what we want to teach the young people from the first moment they enter the new center in 2027.
The collective voice of support for such a space has been inspiring. From the thousands of youth and family we have served and our community partners, to the elected officials and the investors like Sobrato Philanthropies that shape the future of our county, each saw why such a space was necessary. As put by one of our newly minted Youth Advisory Council Members, all agreed that our kids urgently needed:
“...a safe space for us to learn, to heal, and grow. To come together and connect. To learn the skills necessary to become strong leaders, advocates for our community. [A place] where the magic happens, a place we can call our second home.”
As is true for any ambitious dream, the road to get to here, to where we own a space and are ready to build, has been circuitous and bumpy at times. We had long grown out of the various sites we worked, often turning away young people and families from programs. And we saw our other nonprofit partners in the same position. We needed to expand our own unique footprint, not fit into the smallest shoe size we could find.
There were many dead ends — the unfortunate consequences of rising inflation, property cost, and chronic underinvestment in this part of the county. A deal with the first building we identified fell through. But that’s when the collective will and determination of our community manifested.
I must give credit to our anchor partner, Digital NEST, for expanding the network of partners to lean on as we moved past this setback. CEO Jacob Martinez secured a meeting with the owner of the Bank of America building. From there and over the past four years, the list of local and state political leaders, community organizers, small businesses, local land owners, specialists like architects and contractors, and investors has grown.
What did they all see? That our community’s Latinx youth — our future — not only had limited access to critical care (especially mental health support and substance abuse prevention) and initiatives to expand their horizons (like the technology skills-building offered by Digital NEST), but they were literally thrown away. Youth suspended from school and cited for criminal activities at a drastically disproportionate rate. With some of the highest incarceration rates in Santa Clara County, our youth were funneled into a school-to-prison pipeline. We all saw that the trajectory needed to change toward healing, leadership, and fruitful career pathways.
Inspired by the determination of our children, who have been voices and leaders every step of the way, Sobrato Philanthropies joined The Latino Family Fund de Gilroy and Gilroy Community Foundation to catalyze additional investment from other private foundations like The Health Trust and public funding from the Board of Supervisors. More recently, we received a transformational donation from an angel investor that put us over the funding threshold to start construction and renovations.
At the same time, our community came together to voice support and offer expertise. We continue to be eternally grateful to Community Vision for the guidance given to us and all the additional BIPOC-led organizations they serve to find and secure community spaces and assets.
All of these stakeholders, including our young people and their families, demonstrated again and again that our kids are worth the investment.
Over the next several months, we will be reviewing the plans and mapping out the steps of construction. From the first step inside, our youth and families will see themselves reflected on the walls with murals and art installations that embody their enduring ancestral values and endless potential. The spaces will be built to welcome and heal. Programs will expand, especially around career building, but also to provide emergency services (like clothing, food, and case management). And at its heart, the Gilroy Youth Impact Center will be a place to connect, inspire, and nurture generations of leaders who will shape the future of their communities and of California.
The proudest achievement for me? It’s the youth who came to us for guidance and now will lead the way in shaping how the space is run, how programming will adapt and evolve, how inspiration will transform into action. A Youth Advisory Council has been formed, and it (with other youth leaders) led a participatory design process in collaboration with Phillips Win Architecture. They are also informing the look, feel, and content of the Center’s website. Plus, they will lead the process of naming the center. They are embodying Youth Alliance’s commitment to generations coming through the doors of the center:
“Nothing for us without us.”
What more profound way could our youth exemplify potential and the impact of collective power?