Collective cafe helping south Jackson youth become ‘confident and prepared to take on the world’ ...Middle East

Where Daniel Lake Boulevard intersects with Terry Road in south Jackson sits a gas station, a strip mall with a blood donation center and the remnants of a failed grocery store. 

At one corner, there’s a recently renovated building, its painted exterior covered in brightly-colored sketches of people eating ice cream and sipping on cups of coffee. 

This is the home of Riverside Collective, a weekend coffee shop and ice cream bar that opened its doors in July. It’s here where students such as Antonio Ramirez can learn what it means to be a part of a community. 

“I’m learning how to manage my money, how to make coffee, how to run a business, how to profit, and how to communicate with people and share the idea of Riverside,” the Provine High School sophomore said. 

Ramirez said that while many of his classmates don’t have jobs, he enjoys being able to spend his time working with a group of teenagers that have become his friends. Riverside Collective runs a student entrepreneurship program and currently has eight teens on staff. Ramirez said that he hopes through Riverside Collective, their work can change the narrative of the dwindling landscape of south Jackson.

“People say Jackson barely has anything in it,” Ramirez said. “I feel kind of bad about people saying that about Jackson. I want Jackson to be a city where people can have fun.”

Riverside Collective, co-founded by Vilas Annavarapu, was a project three years in the making. The nonprofit chose south Jackson for its location inside the abandoned Regions Bank because Annavarapu saw it as a place of untapped potential. 

“We wanted to do economic development work in a place where a lot of people aren’t doing economic development work, and in fact, stores are leaving,” Annavarapu said.

He points to the recent departures of Burger King and Dollar General stores nearby. 

“People are really nervous to open up businesses in that part of town, and we believe there’s economic opportunity there,” Annavarapu said. “It’s really important that west Jackson, south Jackson have really nice things and good things and places for the community.”

Annavarapu said that as a former middle school teacher, he noticed some of his students found it challenging to work as a team. He wanted to create a place where young people can learn the value of working together while making a fair wage. Most of the workers there are students from Provine High School, and they’re paid $22-an-hour. 

“ I realized so many of our young people have not had the opportunity, nor have they been given the skills to understand how to work in a team and how to work in a team in a way that feels really good,” Annavarapu said. 

Now, he’s hoping that spirit of creativity could lend itself to a fully fleshed out community calendar of events and classes, similar to the Briarwood Arts Center in northeast Jackson.

“What I hope Riverside opens up for young people is their imaginative potential. What can we create and what can we build that’s not already there? And how can that be a good thing?” Annavarapu said.

He hopes the impacts of Riverside Collective can be felt in tangible ways, like the number of people that they serve and the students who participate in the program. But he also wants there to be internal transformations for everyone who comes in contact with their initiative.

“ I think on the more intangible side, it’s when young people come into our program and when they leave it, do they leave feeling more confident and prepared to take on the world and are more attentive to the world around them?” Annavarapu said.

Riverside Collective is located at 3510 Terry Rd. Its business hours are Saturday 9:00 a.m. to 1:00 p.m. and Sunday 12:00 p.m. to 4:00 p.m.

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