Did you know that people ages 15-24 spend 70% less time in person with friends than those of the same age did in 2003? They spend around 1,000 fewer hours per year than kids 20 years ago. Gen Z has the highest levels of self-reported loneliness of any generation (73% say they are lonely). Youth need structured programs that don’t just bring them together, but actively support them in feeling understood, connected, and joyful.

South Asian youth growing up in the United States face a unique set of challenges:

• They rarely learn about South Asian history, stories, languages, and cultures in the classroom.

• Your child will almost never see a teacher who looks like them or shares their background in a school classroom. Around 2% of teachers in the United States are Asian, and South Asians make an even smaller fraction of that.

• They are rarely represented in the media in ways that reflect their family and their experiences.

• Parents, particularly immigrant parents, often are not aware of the range of challenges their child might be facing because they are growing up in such a dramatically different environment.

• South Asian youth often lack a community of South Asian mentors or peers who they feel truly connected to, trust, and can share their inner experiences with. This could explain why

Root to Rise is designed to address all of these problems through fun, hands-on, and connection-center activities that are rooted in South Asian history, and that are taught by South Asian educators.

By South Asian, we mean people with any ancestor that originated from India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nepal, Tibet, Bhutan, Sri Lanka, Burma, Afghanistan, and the Maldives — including diasporas from the Caribbean, Fiji, Africa, and elsewhere. We know that the term “South Asian” doesn’t roll off the tongue quite like “Punjabi” or “Eelam Tamil” or “Guyanese.” We are a space for all experiences and histories of being South Asian - whether you are mixed race, feel disconnected from your family’s identity, have historically felt excluded in South Asian spaces, or just connect with some aspect of this heritage, like music or dance. We are a space for all.

Truthfully, we can’t possibly represent every story. But here is what we do:

Curriculum

We strive to make sure all our curriculum cover a range of stories from different South Asian homelands and diasporas. More importantly, we make sure our students feel represented in our curriculum and our staff. We tailor our curriculum to who is in the room — so that every child’s specific family, stories, interests and histories are included in what we learn.

Staff

Our staff and volunteers currently have roots in Sri Lanka, India (North, South, East, and West), and Pakistan. We are actively recruiting to expand our volunteer roster so that all students can find mentors who share their experiences. We also recognize that place of origin isn’t always the most important identity for a child - sometimes it is sharing gender, caste, religious, socioeconomic or linguistic backgrounds. Sometimes it is being an athlete, loving fashion, or just liking dosas. We make sure your child’s adult mentors are people they can relate to.

Secular

The Banyan Tree is a secular organization, which means that we respect and cherish all caste identities and religious backgrounds. We are not a temple, a mosque, or a church - but we encourage our students to feel comfortable in who they are by sharing their family’s beliefs and practices with pride. We also encourage our youth to learn about people with different beliefs and practices, because peace is only possible when we all work together and know each other. We engage in dialogue and hands-on activities to help our youth understand others, appreciate others, and express kindness towards people with different experiences.

We don’t talk about religions as big, stagnant monoliths that don’t change with time. We know there is no singular history or experience of “Hinduism” or “Islam” or “Jainism” or “Christianity” or “Buddhism” or even “Atheism” - because each community, each family, each person has their own beliefs, stories, and practices that are shaped by history. When we celebrate a festival, we have our students learn the history behind it, and how these practices have changed over time. We also have them investigate how these practices might have excluded and caused harm to some historically, or even in the present. But we do all this while centering joy, play, and celebration. The world is complex - and we make space for the complexity. We make space for thoughtful celebration, we make space for dialogue, we make space for rituals to deepen and evolve as we explore their history, and we make space for lifelong learning. 

Inclusive

We are inclusive, which means that we respect and cherish the range of ways human beings live their lives, and we do our best to accommodate the different needs our participants might have – irrespective of what those are. We are constantly seeking input on how we can personalize our experiences for our participants and families, so if you see a way we could better include you – we really do want your feedback!

Community Days

We will offer a community day every 2 months, where children are allowed to bring a +1 to join. This could be a parent, grandparent, cousin, sibling, friend, etc. They will get to learn and do a fun bonding activity with the child. If the child isn’t able to bring a +1, we totally understand! We will provide a +1 from our staff who will make sure your child isn’t left out, and feels extra special.

If your child’s +1 is a minor, we will need to get a waiver signed on behalf of the child’s parents.

Parent Attendance

We are not able to accommodate parents inside our classrooms at this time outside of community days.

Safety – physical, psychological, and emotional – is of the utmost importance to us. We ensure all children remain safe in a number of ways:

• Teacher-to-student ratios remain at 1:5 at all times, so students receive a high quality of care.

• Teachers are trained inhow to engage with students in a way that cultivates safety.

• Parents are informed immediately if we feel a child is significantly physically hurt or unsafe. (i.e. We won’t call you if your child got a bruise or a paper cut.)

While we try our best to serve our youth, we do know that children do occasionally cry, get upset, or have a difficult encounter with a peer. On these occasions, we use questions and inquiry to understand what may have caused the upset. If we use restorative justice methods to resolve conflict. We use socioemotional skill-building methods to help youth investigate emotions, communicate thoughts, and develop resilience.

• We will release an overview of topics for the following month at the end of each month. 

• Parents are welcome to make topic requests for future months. 

• If we are discussing a sensitive topic (such as puberty or histories of violence), we will highlight these topics at the beginning of each month. Parents may request that their child sit out of a lesson and spend time in our library doing unstructured activities.

Quarterly Multimedia Magazine

We work with our youth to publish a multimedia magazine every 3 months (December, March, June, September). Every young person in our programs gets to contribute something, whether it is a work of art, video, piece of writing, or game. They share their insights and learnings from their activities in the quarter. The magazine is private to participants and their families. With parental and child consent, we will publish pieces publicly on our website, either anonymously or with a first name only, based on parent and child preferences.

Impact Report

We conduct impact evaluation in all our educational programs. This means that when your child joins our program, they will be given a survey to learn about where they stand, both qualitatively and quantitatively, on a range of socioemotional and knowledge skills - including confidence, self-efficacy, self-esteem, self-image, connection to peers, knowledge of family history, etc. This survey is repeated once a quarter so parents can get a little insight into how your child is growing. It also helps us make sure our programs are doing what they are supposed to, so we can keep improving. 

Equity is critical to what we do. We believe that high-quality, personalized, caring education should be accessible to every single child. In reality, very few children in America receive this kind of education. We work to give South Asian families of all backgrounds access to our programs, especially those with socioeconomic barriers (i.e. annual household income of less than $70,000). New immigrant, working class families often benefit from having an extra adult looking out for their child who is fluent in navigating American institutions, and can provide academic support and personal guidance. Your scholarship contribution gives you a chance to invest in this vision of educational equity for South Asian youth.

All children in families with an annual household income lower than $70,000 per year across all guardians are eligible to attend our programs for free. You will need to:

• Complete our scholarship application.

• Provide a recent tax return or other valid proof of household income.

• Please contact tara@the-banyan-tree.org to get started. We will help you complete the application and get your income proof if needed, including translation services.

If your child arrives no more than 15 minutes late or leaves early, they will still be allowed to participate. However, their experience for that session will not be as good. We plan our lessons carefully, and make sure your child is occupied for the full 2 hours.

We will allow late pickups up to 20 minutes after the end of the session. If you are more than 20 minutes late in picking up your child, you will be charged a fee of $50/hour. We will need to compensate our staff if they must stay late to wait for a pickup.

Participants

• At the end of each session, students are given a card to write what they liked and what didn’t work during the session (if anything). They submit it anonymously. 

• Students get private time with an instructor once a quarter to share how they are doing, and what, if anything, they are struggling with.

• Participants are always welcome to talk to an instructor about what they are experiencing - whether positive, negative, or neutral.

Parents

• We have a feedback form for parents in case they want to submit feedback anonymously.

• We send out an optional feedback form to parents once a month in case they want to share something they are concerned about or happy about.

• The instructors are available for a 15-minute check-in call by appointment.

Yes! We focus heavily on South Asian diasporic history and experiences in our programs, but we welcome youth and families of all backgrounds.

To withdraw your child from the program, you simply have to contact your child’s instructor and express intent to withdraw. All payments are made on a month-to-month basis, which means that we will stop charging you from your next payment date. We cannot provide prorated refunds at this time.

If you are on vacation that consumes most of the month, or your child is absent for an extended period, you can pause your membership until you return. We will always checkin if your child is absent for more than 3 consecutive sessions to see if you wish to pause your membership.