Our History

From 1996 to 2001, Christopher Yanov worked as the Youth Director at the Hispanic Presbyterian Church of San Diego. The majority of the teens he first worked with were involved in a lifestyle dominated by drugs and gangs. As time progressed, Chris saw that poor academic results quickly opened the loodgates to a plethora of even more problems, including violence, vandalism, teen pregnancy, and even death.

All of these teens seemed desperate to find a way out of this situation, yet were still convinced that there was simply no other feasible way of life. To combat this "inner-city syndrome," Chris realized that a radically new sense of self must be instilled in young individuals before gangs and drugs capture them and lead them down the path of inevitable self-destruction. Indeed, in order to be successful, inner-city teens must change the reality that surrounds them.

In May 2001, Reality Changers: Agentes de Cambio was born. The large majority of RC members are chosen to join the group when they are in the 8th or 9th grade because experience has shown that this is the age when most people - regardless of residence or socioeconomic status - are consumed with some type of activity, be it positive or negative.

Reality Changers creates a positive peer culture by selecting students who have strong personalities and are highly energetic, yet also have enough self-discipline to focus on their future. These traits are key to forming and developing youth leadership.

Public speakers commonly say that if their speeches reach just one person in the room, the speech is effective.  Reality Changers takes this concept one step further by taking that "one student" from an entire school’s worth of classrooms and puts them all together to form a group of highly motivated teens who encourage each other to succeed, both academically and spiritually.

In 2004, Reality Changers opened a second location to serve San Diego's North County residents and in 2006, a third location opened in the San Diego neighborhood of City Heights, both run by RC graduates attending local universities.