TMCnet News
New Online Community 'The Village' Debuts to Address the Unmet Needs of Foster YouthSAN CARLOS, Calif., Sept. 17, 2019 /PRNewswire/ -- Foster the Future, Inc., a non-profit dedicated to improving the lives of foster children, today announced the launch of its online community – The Village. In this first phase, Foster the Future will focus on recruiting 1,000 Santa Clara and San Mateo county adults who are interested in helping and guiding foster youth through small, non-monetary contributions of knowledge, skills or other resources. The organization plans to open up the platform to foster youth in December 2019, connecting those who want to help with foster children in need. Organizations such as the juvenile dependency court, county child protective services (CPS), child welfare departments and scores of private organizations are doing everything they can to ensure foster children are safe, housed, fed and clothed despite stretched budgets and staff. The Village will augment ongoing efforts of these organizations by empowering the entire community to help by providing resources and contributions – large or small. These contributions can be as simple as a 15 minute email or phone conversation about something of interest to the child, giving a book to a child to read, or can be as involved as teaching a young person to design a website, garden, improve math skills or play a sport, depending on their interests and the adults' available time. "The first step with The Village is get as many caring adults from our community to stand up and say that foster kids do matter and they want to help," said The Village founder and orchestrator, Jay MacIntosh. "Before we invite the kids to participate, our goal is to recruit 1,000 adults with varied experiences and backgrounds who are interested in participating. In December, once The Village is populated with adults who are excited to help foster youth, the platform will be opened up to the kids and suppot will start to flow. Ultimately, we anticipate that tens of thousands of adults from all around the Bay Area will engage." Research shows that many at-risk kids do in fact turn their lives around when they see adults from their community taking an interest in their well being. The beauty of The Village is that any caring adult can provide guidance, support and even inspiration to these at-risk kids in as few as 5 minutes, or in a more extensive way if desired, and it's the underlying technology that makes this all possible. Support for The Village is already building across the other organizations that work hard to address the challenges. "The Village offers an opportunity for all of us in the community to connect with children in need. It simply makes good sense to be a member of The Village," said Judge Len Edwards, retired Juvenile Dependency Court Judge from the Superior Court of Santa Clara County. The Village's technology platform was built by a team of Silicon Valley tech veterans to address this important societal need. The team understands the importance of an architecture that is reliable and secure that can scale to provide secure insights/data and analytics that can be easily shared. "I support The Village because our youth have so many needs, and CPS simply does not have the funding and resources to meet all of their needs. As a social worker, having an organization like The Village that coordinates additional resources and referrals opens the door to a full spectrum of possibilities that allows foster youth to simply be kids, just as they should be," said a San Mateo social worker. The newly recruited adults from the community (Village Guides), start by building a profile listing their experiences, interests and skills along with other ways they'd like to help. The foster youth, along with a foster parent, case worker or CASA volunteer (Village Sponsor), create a Youth profile describing their interests, needs and aspirations. The Village back-end system then finds matches and serves these suggestions up to the Sponsor and Youth. The Sponsor connects with the potential Guide to determine the best fit and then facilitates the process. About The Village Contact:
SOURCE Foster the Future, Inc. 
|
View original content: