The year the model scaled from pilot to system.

Our deepest, most sustained engagement of the year. The semester opened with alternative-professions workshops — barbering, coffee, tattoo artistry — led by TropiWhat, Disidente, Café Comunión, and Siul, deliberately widening what a viable career can look like.

Two Boot Camps defined the creative arc: the first in June with El Vagón Estudio (five days, nine original songs); the second in October, a full album project with a plena workshop connecting the work back to Puerto Rican musical roots.

Beyond music: Eladio Carrión's Therapy Dogs program, Barber Shop by Rimas, a Soccer Lab clinic, a visit to the Museo de Arte de Ponce, and a surprise appearance by boxer Xander Zayas — who arrived with pizza right after participants completed a workshop on effective questioning.

In November, participants presented 6–8 original pieces on the newly renovated court, sponsored by Jowell. On December 29, Villalba closed its semester with 79 youth impacted.

It was a completely new experience for many of them — young people who never imagined they could write, let alone sing.

— Social Worker, Villalba Campus

In October we opened our campus at the Ponce Girls Correctional Center — the most significant expansion of the year. With it, Fundación Rimas became one of very few organizations providing continuous, structured programming inside Puerto Rico's juvenile correction system, and the first to extend that work systematically to young women.

Participants began with the Bootcamp format — composing and recording their first track at El Vagón Estudio, parked at Villalba — for most, a first encounter with the idea that their own voice could be the material. We also marked one participant's "Sweet 16" — a small gesture with a clear message: mistakes do not foreclose a future.

November marked the official launch of La Academia Campus Comunidad — a program built around a gap we had watched open for two years. Young people would complete our programming inside an institution, then leave, and the rehabilitation structure would end at the gate. Campus Comunidad follows them out.

Through personalized sessions, participants receive coaching in planning, emotional expression, social skills, and vocational guidance during reintegration. It is the piece that makes the rest of the model add up to something continuous rather than episodic.