History and Core Values of Teens Rise Foundation
Teens Rise Foundation began with 30 students and one summer.
In 2018, a small team set up in San Ysidro High School with a simple goal: give a group of students in one of San Diego's most underserved communities a real shot at college. The students who showed up that summer came from a border region where nearly 25% of young people live below the poverty line and fewer than 10% of adults hold college degrees – where language barriers, financial pressure, and limited transportation make the path to higher education feel less like a choice and more like an obstacle course.
What TRF saw that summer shaped everything that followed: the students weren't lacking ambition. They were lacking access.
Eight years later, Teens Rise Foundation now serves thousands of students annually across 14 Title I schools in four South County school districts. But the core conviction hasn't changed. The students in these communities are showing up – for school, for opportunity, for something beyond the circumstances they were born into.
TRF exists to make sure that showing up leads somewhere.
Built with communities, not just for them
Most nonprofit programs are designed for the people they serve. TRF designs with them.
Before any initiative launches – whether athletic, academic, or wellness-focused – TRF holds structured listening sessions with school superintendents, principals, counselors, after-school directors, community partners, students, and families. Students and families don't just inform program design: they shape it. They determine the activities, formats, and focus areas that TRF delivers. Once programs are running, ongoing feedback through pre- and post-surveys, student reflection logs, and family evaluations keeps everything responsive to what students actually need, not what was assumed when the program started.
For TRF, co-design isn't a process requirement — it's a value.
Present on campus, embedded where it matters
TRF doesn't ask students to come to the support. It brings the support to them.
Through formal MOU agreements with Sweetwater Union High School District, San Ysidro School District, and Chula Vista Elementary School District, TRF staff are physically present on school campuses – before school, during the school day, and after – working alongside teachers, counselors, and families in close collaboration. This embedded model is what makes TRF's reach possible and its relationships real. The TRF program staff whom students encounter aren't outsiders visiting once a week. They are trusted, familiar faces who know students by name, understand their circumstances, and show up consistently.
Focused on the whole student, not just one part of them
TRF's signature Serves, Scholars, y Salud program reflects a foundational belief: you cannot separate students’ academic trajectories from their physical health, mental wellbeing, or sense of who they are.
Serves builds confidence and belonging through athletic programs. Scholars transforms what students believe is possible through college and career readiness programming. Salud ensures students have the mental health support and wellness tools to actually use what Serves and Scholars give them.
Together, the three pillars reach 2,894 South Bay elementary, middle, and high school students each academic year, not as separate interventions, but as one integrated commitment to the whole person.
What TRF believes
The students TRF serves are not behind. They are in communities that have been underinvested in for generations, and they are showing up anyway. TRF exists to make sure the ambition that brings a first-generation student to a college workshop, a career panel, or a campus tour has somewhere real to go.
That's what started in San Ysidro in 2018. That's what continues today.