Improving the Lives of Foster Youth
The MVC Foundation is dedicated to improving the lives of current and former foster youth as well as the families and systems that work together to raise and find “forever homes” for the more than 400,000 foster children in our country’s child welfare system today.
The sad reality is, that over 26,000 foster youth age out of the system when they turn 18 or 21 every year. They do not have a support system in place to help them integrate into society. They are handed a trash bag, a list of homeless shelters and little to no resources, and are sent into the world to fend on their own.
By the age of 18, the average foster youth has moved through 8 different foster homes. Moving through so many homes and schools creates a feeling of being unwanted or unloved, and makes it difficult to develop the social and life skills cultivated in a loving home. Their inability to build trust and maintain relationships lead to a network deficiency. Security and optimism are replaced with loss and hopelessness when youth age out and have nowhere to turn for help.
To help, the MVC Foundation is financing efforts to create permanent live, work and learn communities where former foster youth can have a permanent place to live and can learn skills in the areas of wellness, hospitality, culinary arts and visual and performing arts as well as trade skills to allow them to manage hospitality and event venues and to be able to build a bond with others in their community and to help them build a permanent support system for themselves and not only to keep them off the streets, but to learn how to thrive in society, and to pass this forward to others coming out of the system.
These homes can also serve as learning centers for current foster youth, to learn that there is a support system available to them when they graduate, and that they can build a life for themselves in a safe and a permanent environment.
The most important thing about the program is that we expect it to be fully self sustainable, and to in fact produce a profit that can be used to build more similar live, work and learn communities, thus solving this problem one child at a time.