What we are
The Upstream Project is a California nonprofit public benefit corporation based in Simi Valley, serving children ages 6–17 across Ventura County. We're founder-led, board-governed, and deliberately lean: money goes to providers on behalf of kids, not to overhead.
We don't run programs of our own. We work alongside the people already doing this well — parks and recreation districts, youth clubs, leagues, schools, and music, STEM, and arts programs — and cover the specific costs that keep an individual child from joining in.
How we work
When a family, coach, teacher, or partner program tells us a child wants to participate and cost is in the way, Upstream pays the registration fee, buys the equipment, instrument, or supplies, or arranges the transportation — directly with the provider. Families never handle the money, and no child is singled out.
We fill a specific gap. After-school care and expanded learning programs serve many families well. Upstream covers what they don't: the individual costs of a specific activity a child actually wants to do.
Where we are today
Our federal tax-exempt (501(c)(3)) application is in progress. While we wait, we are building our first season of support through pledges from founding supporters, which are honored once our determination arrives.
Our name
Upstream comes from the idea of moving the point of intervention earlier — reaching a child before the drop-off, not after. The salmon in our logo is heading the hard direction on purpose.
Dr. Chelsey Leasure-Gomez
Founder & President
Chelsey holds a Doctor of Health Administration, a Master of Public Administration, and a Bachelor's degree in Dietetics, and has spent her career inside California's health care system — in managed care operations, compliance, and health policy — working on the question of why some kids and families get access and others don't.
That work kept pointing to the same answer: the biggest drivers of a child's health are not clinical. They are the social determinants of health — the conditions a child grows up in, from family income and neighborhood to whether they have safe places to move, friends to belong with, and adults who show up for them. Youth sports, music, STEM, and the arts touch nearly every one of those conditions at once. The Upstream Project is her answer to a pattern she kept seeing: the barriers that keep a child off a team or out of a music program are usually small, specific, and fixable, and the health consequences of staying on the sidelines are not.
She also grew up in exactly the programs Upstream supports: AYSO and Eclipse club soccer, Simi Valley Girls Softball, water polo and softball at Royal High School, and softball at Moorpark College. She still plays recreation softball and trains jiu-jitsu — proof that what a kid starts at eight can last a lifetime.
She lives in Simi Valley and started Upstream here because this is the community she wants to see every kid get a shot in.