Sejahari Saulter-Villegas said he considers Kuumba Lynx to be a "utopia."
"Kids can come in here and be safe, be loud, be angry, be sad," he said.
Kuumba Lynx is arts and education healing hip-hop organization based in Uptown.
Saulter-Villegas in an alum of the organization and said it's the reason he was able to travel the world and receive five scholarships to attend New York University, where he studied drama and Africana studies.
"I was writing my own plays, directing my own plays with this grounding of social justice and thinking about how I can make the NYU space a more just space and advocate for Black, brown, and low-income students," Saulter-Villegas said.
He said none of that would have been possible without Kuumba Lynx, which was founded in 1996 by Jaquanda Villegas, Leyda “Lady Sol” Garcia and Jacinda Bullie.
Villegas said they started the organization to create a space where inner city youth could "express themselves, come as they are and be celebrated for who they are."
"Kuumba means creativity ... Lynx means links in a chain, but also represents the mighty cat, the lynx," Villegas said. "The lynx is a small cat, but it has a really big roar. So we had a model of creativity linked together with a mighty roar, and really that translated into the work that we do, which is liberation through arts and healing in hip-hop."
The group offers everything from weekly movement classes, to a performance ensemble, to wellness trainings.
Villegas says by providing a space where students can freely express and be themselves, Kuumba Lynx is fostering an environment of healing.
"It is a sense of their story and that in their experience, that will hit your heart first, amd the art is like a byproduct of that," she said. "I think that's how it manifests, is healing."
She said her greatest hope for students is that they feel "good in their skin."
"They feel good in their bodies and their spirits," she said. "They feel held, they feel seen, and then they feel celebrated for what they bring to the table, whatever they bring to the table, they feel celebrated for it."
That is certainly the case for Saulter-Villegas, who even returned to Kuumba Lynx after completing the program as a way to give back.
"Kuumba Lynx gave me teeth," he said. "They gave me the power to think for myself, empower myself. Kuumba Lynx has empowered me to reach for my dreams and advocate for what is right."