Caring for Our Community Like Family
The Sankofa Center: The Bee Foundation, Inc serves youth, adults, returning citizens, and emerging leaders in underserved communities as neighbors, not strangers. We walk beside students navigating school disengagement, families facing instability, and adults returning home, and we treat every participant as a person of value and leadership potential.
We stay small and personal on purpose so that every cohort can feel the difference quickly in real relationships, not just in paperwork. When a school, agency, or community group partners with us, that support turns into something you can feel in the room, calmer energy, safer circles, stronger voices, and clearer next steps for the people you care about most.
Born From Frontline Experience
The Sankofa Center: The Bee Foundation, Inc began when founder Richard Hermitt had already spent years in community violence intervention, leadership training, and hard conversations with families, schools, and public agencies. Richard watched young people cycle between crisis, suspension, and survival, with no steady space to rebuild identity, discipline, and purpose. Out of those lived lessons, he shaped what became Roots To Rise Academy, a structured pathway that treats every participant as a developing leader, not a permanent problem.
In 2024, that vision took formal shape as a 501(c)(3) organization with a clear belief at the center, communities cannot transform apart from the people who live, lead, serve, and make decisions within them. Since then, Roots To Rise has been offered as both a staff development track and a direct facilitation program, grounded in ancestral wisdom, trauma-informed practice, and the M.E.L.T. Framework. What started as one practitioner refusing to settle for crisis response alone has grown into a leadership development movement that helps people reconnect to their roots and rise in service to their communities.
Equity and Cultural Pride
We honor ancestral wisdom and cultural identity so that every participant experiences development as an act of dignity, belonging, and pride.
Trauma-Informed
We recognize trauma, building safe spaces where youth and adults practice emotional regulation, accountability, and healing in real time.
Growing Leaders for Life
We build mentored rites-of-passage journeys that turn short-term crisis response into lasting leadership, service, and community responsibility.
Richard Hermitt
Founder and CEO. Richard developed Roots To Rise Academy through years of direct experience in community violence intervention, leadership training, and collaboration with community organizations, public agencies, and national leadership institutions.
“Communities do not transform apart from the people who live, lead, serve, and make decisions within them.”