Fred and Angela Thomas with over forty-five years of law-enforcement, experienced gun violence prevention advocates and juvenile delinquency background experience. Rise Up 4 Change staff is familiar with teenage vulnerability to violence. Fred and Angela  started out realizing a need to extend their time, expertise, knowledge, and skills to reach out and provide services to disadvantaged/homeless youth throughout the community. We self-funded to provide the needed services in hopes of reducing deaths and injuries from gun violence.

Rise Up 4 Change use social-emotional learning measurements to evaluate key competencies such as empathy, teamwork initiatives, responsibility and problem solving. Recent evaluations indicate that over 94 percent of Rise Up 4 Change students improved in academic performance, overall conduct, and decision-making skills. We started out with one group of 20 to 30 children and now we’re servicing over 3500 children and their families and we’ve expand from South Dade to North Miami.