Like you, I have a lot of reasons to feel kind of glad to see 2025 end. Not that the things that made us struggle in 2025 don’t carry over into 2026. But the last page on a calendar does offer a chance to collectively catch our breath for a moment. Active resistance requires occasional rest.

To complicate things, 2025 has also brought things to be grateful for. I don’t know of a term that encompasses feelings of rage, joy, worry, hope, resolve, uncertainty, defense, pro-activeness, fatigue, invigoration, catastrophe, organizing, outrage, strategizing, and more (which is why I’ve stopped being able to answer the simple question, ‘how are you?’).

The harms and grief of 2025 hold plenty of airtime; we each know the shared and individual forms of suffering we’ve endured. So I will devote these reflections to sources of gratitude. Here are 12 moments of reflection on 12 months of work emanating from our inspiring office space and made possible by an amazing AHSHAY family:

• In the first half of 2025, our Fortifying Futures project was in full swing. As Shawn Ginwright would say, the project had moved from hustle to flow, and the project gatherings breathed youth-celebrating life into our office.
• The first half of the year also saw the crescendo of filming for the Garfield Documentary. Added tragic loss, a community-affirming field day, and a bittersweet graduation ceremony, were all captured in the documentary footage.
• Midyear brought the publishing of our signature national study on detention center closure attempts. Featured in a major public health journal, this study would spark a national collaborative to share learnings and recommendations about closing youth detention centers.
• Summer included heady efforts to compile and organize the wealth of information gathered in the Fortifying Futures project.
• Summer also brought the forging of a relationship with the Chinook Tribe to support their efforts to reclaim the closed Naselle Juvenile Facility and repurpose it for tribal needs.
• Fall was a time of organizing AHSHAY into a full-fledged Center, with hiring to meet the needs of several project arcs and the building of our operational infrastructure. Our office spaces filled as we welcomed Adrian, Julia, and Marley to the team.
• In the fall, we also gathered at the Central Cinema for a student-honoring gathering and preview of the True Dawgs documentary.
• Fall also meant finalizing a detailed report of the Fortifying Future Project and its revelations.
• Planning for the Story Book Project got into high gear in the fall. Our team members dove deep into the onion-peeling process of learning how to author, illustrate, and publish a children’s book.
• Fall and early winter involved weighty planning for the King County Youth Wellness Project, our Prevention Network effort. South Seattle became the hoped-for hyperlocal region for the prevention implementation arm of the project.
• The latter three months of the year also saw us beginning to overtly manifest our Narrative Strategies work. Each project and our organizational infrastructure benefited from a more expert and cultivated approach to our communications.
• As the year headed toward its close, AHSHAY had a solid operations model, Fortifying Futures work was inspiring the launch of Prevention Network efforts, national detention closure convenings were being planned, our advisory group was galvanizing, the Story Book Project was ready to launch at the turn of the calendar year, the Garfield Documentary was teed up for making film festival and learning-tool versions, our Narrative Strategies were being seen by our followers, and AHSHAY’s combined efforts were cohesively organized under a belonging framework.

The year was complicated. Yet it is always a great privilege to have the opportunity to do good work when bad things are happening around us. And the work of AHSHAY has been good work. Especially because every part of the work holds the voices, the laughter, the inspiration, the creativity, and the resolve of brilliant youth, along with the intergenerational circles who support them

Peace and Justice in 2026

Ben