Transportation is a roadblock for many underprivileged communities throughout the Bay Area. Youth can miss out on many opportunities when they do not have the means to get to their activities or extracurriculars. Craig Flax, Redwood boys’ tennis coach, founded the Youth Transportation Organization (Yoots) to address this issue.

Yoots’ mission is to provide transportation for children who live in underserved communities. Flax, a 1981 alumnus of San Rafael High School, founded Yoots in 2016 and has been working tirelessly since. 

“What’s exciting for me is I found this opportunity when I was in my 50s, and I’m now doing something that I love more than anything that I had ever been doing before,” Flax said.

Flax was inspired to start Yoots in 2014 while producing a documentary about rock climber Tom Frost, who had been mentoring champion climber Kai Lightner. Flax talked with Lightner’s mother, Connie Lightner, about the Every Kid in a Park program run by the United States National Park Service that provides free access to national parks for fourth graders.

“Connie grew up on welfare in Cleveland, and she said, ‘Who cares if the park is free if you can’t get there?’ And that was the spark for Yoots. I realized just how small your life can be if you don’t have access to safe, reliable and inexpensive transportation,” Flax said.

While public transportation is always there, it often has downsides that can impact riders’ ability to move between school, sports and home in a timely manner.

“You miss out on a lot of stuff when you don’t have access to easy transportation,” Flax said. 

Yoots collaborates with other community organizations like the YMCA and Outward Bound. For example, Yoots transported almost 400 students from Oakland to the Empower Me College Fair. Some Title One schools, where 40 percent of the students qualify for the Free and Reduced Lunch program, also utilize Yoots services. Students can request rides for personal reasons without schools or outside programs. 

“As long as we’re helping the underserved youth with transportation…it could be job interviews,  internships, healthcare, appointments and field trips. It’s a very impactful opportunity,” Flax said.

Yoots typically organizes transportation through buses, but also utilizes BART rides or Lyft. Schools can even use Yoots for transportation for field trips at a low cost.

“We’re working on having a fund that helps with the cost,” Flax said. “It’s always the school or the organization that we work with that pays. The only time something is free is [in] our [pilot] BART program, which [provides] free rides on BART for Title One schools,” Flax said.

The BART pilot program was paid for by the David and Lucile Packard Foundation, Google and the Golden State Warriors. Yoots recently received a $1.8 million grant from the state of California for Yoots to collaborate with the Richmond Outdoor Coalition, which is made up of nine nonprofits in Richmond dedicated to getting more kids and families outdoors. Yoots plans to purchase an electric school bus and multiple electric SUVs to empower those other organizations.

Currently, Yoots focuses their work  around the Bay Area, but Flax believes that the organization will eventually become national in some form.  

“I don’t care how people get kids to where they need to go. I just want to help them get there. It doesn’t have to be part of my organization,” Flax said. 

Flax has not only contributed to the Marin community through Yoots, but also through tennis coaching. While Flax was creating Yoots, he was also working as the Redwood boys’ tennis coach, starting as an assistant in 2015. Junior Ollie Weston is on the boys’ tennis team and is very complimentary.

“I like how he values creating a bond between players and creating this connection. [He] values creating this team. I think that makes him a great coach,” Weston said. 

Through Flax’s dedication, Yoots now provides around 30,000 rides annually to underprivileged youth. Flax expects Yoots to provide around 400,000 rides next school year with more funding. 

For more information about Yoots, or to request rides, visit yoots.org.