To Foster Change

Despite a tumultuous childhood in foster care and a fractured leg injury in high school, Annika kept pursuing her college dream of going to the ...

Shari talks about the impact of her 15 mentors and how a new mobile school launching in fall of 2017 will expand foster youth's education ...

Brittany Cannon is 24 years old and lives in Los Angeles. Before she headed west from Florida, she spent most of her upbringing in tumultuous ...

Athena is among the 38% of foster youth in California who are reunited with their birth parents. She is also among the small percentage of ...

At the age of 24, Marisa works at Children’s Law Center of California (CLC) in Los Angeles, where she helps foster youth access the resources ...

Victor Pinzon, 25, knows about fighting. As a youth growing up in a gang-riddled Northern California neighborhood, he let his fists do the talking. Eventually his constant scrapes ...

Every morning before school, 17-year-old Lonnell rises before dawn to make his way to the football field at Manual Arts High School. At 6:00 a.m., ...

The former foster youth, who grew up in San Bernardino County and was placed in foster care at the age of 12, was ultimately reunified ...

If you asked Erica about her journey to get to where she is today, she'd tell you that being a former foster youth is her ...

When Briana Spencer was 23 years old, she took her first yoga class at Santa Monica City College in Los Angeles and hated it. In ...

Growing up in a foster home in Southern California, Valerie Anderson always knew when a social worker was getting ready to visit. The behavior of ...

Josh Elizondo, 20, is an advocate with California Youth Connection (CYC), a statewide youth-led organization focused on improving foster care policy.

The importance of family and impacting early childhood early on is what drives Rosa Arevalo, Senior Program Coordinator for CASA of Los Angeles, to keep ...

Maegan Mattock is a Senior Program Coordinator for CASA of Los Angeles who trains CASA volunteers to advocate for children in the Los Angeles foster ...

In his own words, corporate attorney Forrest Prull shares how he helped the Walt Disney Company bring happiness to LA’s foster youth and their families.

Volunteers come in many forms. They can be athletes, coaches, teachers, parents, grandparents, relatives, busy executives or students. Peter Gragnani, former New York City chef ...

When words fail, grieving children can find an outlet in music. That’s the success story for many foster youth and their families at Los Angeles-based mental ...

Although David Green often wears his advocacy hat these days, representing the Service Employees International Union’s (SEUI) local chapter, Green has been a social worker ...

For transitional age youth (TAY), finding and securing housing and employment while staying mentally, physically and emotionally strong can be tough. Shaquenta "Q" McDonald, a ...

At first, 12-year-old foster youth Jack wouldn’t talk to his Court Appointed Special Advocate (CASA), Lynn Temple. He might nod or shake his head, but ...

Three years ago, two women met randomly at The RightWay Foundation, an organization which provides transition age foster youth (TAY) employment and mental health services. One ...

For Nurit Kotick, long-time Pasadena resident, wife, mother, mentor volunteer and board member at nonprofit Hillsides, mentoring youth has changed her life.

Dwayne Castronova is a busy video producer at PBS SOCAL’S KOCE-TV. But he also still finds time to be a dedicated CASA volunteer at CASA ...

Being a social worker is a difficult job and is never a “nine-to-five.” The children keep me going. The cases that make my job worthwhile ...

In foster care, family comes in all shapes and sizes. Four years ago, when Marcy Valenzuela was only 24, she decided to take in two ...

Miranda and Alex opened their homes and hearts a couple years ago to three girls, all under the age of three. Two of the girls ...

In 2006, I began the process as a single woman, clear that my desire was to offer an African-American boy a permanent, loving home. I ...

To master his passion, Deitrick started his photography education through trial and error. Then, last year, he enrolled in a two-day boot camp hosted by ...

Erin and Tony Kim have a blended family, with two birth kids and two foster-adoptive kids who range in age from to 9 to 15. ...

Across Southern California, foster parents take in children from foster care to give them a loving, safe and comfortable home. Some of those children become ...

Scott Sparks & Wilber Rubio are two proud dads who fostered-to adopt three siblings from Los Angeles-based nonprofit organization, RaiseAChild. Read their inspiring journey to ...

In her own words, Dee Delara shares her inspiring foster-to-adopt story.

Carlos and Gail Remis have been on the front lines caring for foster children for the last 20 years, providing clean beds and hot meals, ...

Single foster mother, Estrellita “Essie” Bradic, is a long-time elementary school teacher and advocate for foster children. Despite the year and a half of hurdles ...