From Foster Care to Success: The Power of Human Connection

Episode 018
Guest: Just in Time for Foster Youth, San Diego, CA

There’s a difference between being supported… and truly belonging.

In this episode of The Belonging Podcast, Melissa sits down with Diane and Don from Just in Time for Foster Youth to explore what happens when young people are given something many have never experienced before: consistency, care, and a place where they don’t have to leave after making a mistake.

Through powerful stories and lived experience, this conversation reveals how early instability shapes behavior and how belonging has the power to rewrite those patterns.

This isn’t just about foster youth.
It’s about all of us.

What becomes possible when someone stays?
When mistakes don’t mean rejection?
When people are seen, supported, and given space to grow?

This episode is a glimpse into what it looks like to move from survival… into wholeness.

💡 Key Topics:

• Life after foster care
• The importance of belonging
• Mental and emotional challenges
• How mentorship changes lives
• Building real human connection
• The joy and wholeness of belonging
  
  This episode will open your eyes and touch your heart
  
  Just in Time
  Website: https://jitfosteryouth.org/
  
  BOOK:
  Life Changing Choices https://jitfosteryouth.org/book-lifec...
  
  If you’ve ever wondered how one relationship can change a life, this episode is a must-watch.
  
  This podcast is made possible by the generosity of our patron: Deana Laughlin
  Thank you Deana!!
  
  Learn More About Elev8 Villages:
  Website: https://www.elev8villages.org/
  Download your FREE Belonging Kit: https://www.elev8villages.org/FREEkit
  
  💭 If this episode inspires you, don’t for

This podcast exists because we believe belonging is not a luxury. It’s a human need. Every story shared here helps us imagine a world where no one has to walk alone. 

If this conversation resonated with you, please follow, rate, or share the show with someone who might need it today. To learn more about the movement we’re building (or to get involved) visit Elev8Villages.org.

Thank you for joining us for this episode of The Belonging Podcast by Elev8 Villages - where belonging becomes a place we build together. 

Transcript

SPEAKER_03 0:00

Welcome to the Belonging Podcast by Elevate Villages. I'm your host, Melissa Kay, and I am honored and so excited for today's episode. I have two representatives from Just in Time for Foster Youth out of San Diego, California. And they are going to talk to us today about youth who have aged out of foster care and all the work that they've been doing and all of the lessons they've learned. So much wisdom of creating opportunities for these youth. Without further ado, let me introduce to you Diane Cox. She is the co-founder and strategic philanthropy advisor. And Don Wells, the CEO, the Chief Empowerment Officer, both from Justin Time for Foster Youth. Welcome to the Belonging Podcast.

SPEAKER_00 0:53

Thanks for having us. We appreciate it.

SPEAKER_03 0:55

Hello. Hi. So Justin Time has been going for over 20 years. And what I know that we share without even having talked about it prior is building belonging for youth who don't have it elsewhere. So I want to start out right away in case some of our listeners haven't been around youth who've aged out of foster care. Could you just give us an overview of the depth of struggles that they go through as they come into adulthood? What happens for these youth who've been in foster care in and out for most of their lives?

SPEAKER_00 1:34

Well, the people who are listening to this podcast, I would ask them when they're 18, could they leave home and then not ask their parents for anything else after that and just be able to make their lives work? And for those of your listeners who have children, can you imagine that your children would leave home at 18 and never need anything else from you and they would be fine? And so, and that's with all of the preparation and all the support that you've given them so far, they still could not do that at 18. So young people have been in foster care, they don't have that foundation, they don't have that preparation, and at 18, they're supposed to go out and make their lives work. And think about, and this is in the context of belonging, think about if you are 18, trying to become an adult, which is which is difficult to make that transition, but you also don't have any backup. You don't have any support, you don't have a community around you. Think of the anxiety that that creates because you are now, it's almost like a life or death situation. I can't make any mistakes because there's nobody there to catch me if I fall. And so I'm walking around with all kinds of anxiety, mental, emotional, and physical stress. That is not something that is healthy for anybody. And that's the situation that exists for these young people who are aging out of the foster care system without support. And that's what, you know, Diane, when she found it just in time, there was almost nothing for youth who were who were aging out of the foster care system. And she saw a need and she stepped in it.

SPEAKER_02 3:06

Yeah, I think so many years ago, um, a friend of mine who was an attorney representing youth in the court systems who were in foster care, she and I were friends. And one uh at holiday time in December, she asked me if I would put together some gift baskets to deliver to these young people who had just gone out on their own. They had subsidized housing, uh, so they had a place to live, you know, individual places to live. And I asked if I could go with her to deliver the baskets to the different youth. There were 25. So for two days we went around and delivered these baskets. And what I what I s noticed was that, first of all, I was so inspired by the spirit of these young people. They were turning 18. They were so excited. I'm gonna go out into the world as an adult. They were so excited. And at the same time, I'm kind of horrified because here I am a mom. My kids had already graduated from college, right? So I'd seen my own children go through that transition to adulthood. And here were these kids that had housing. Often no bed, sleeping bag on the floor, no table, no desk, no kitchen supplies. I mean, and I'm thinking, oh dear, these kids are on their own. They have a roof over their heads, but not much else. And who's gonna help them when they face these obstacles that every young person faces when they're making that transition to adulthood? So I said to Jeanette, this is just wrong. This is just wrong. And so from there we started. I would happen to be a business person out in the community, in the real estate uh domain. And I said, I know lots of people that have stuff, furnishings, and you know these kids that are in the system that need that are coming out of the system that need things. All we have to do is get volunteers with trucks. We'll just take the stuff from the people that have it and bring it to the kids that need it. And that's how we started. But I will say what we learned over time is that and and and having stuff, having resources is very important. But what we learned is that what youth needed more than anything was to know that they belong, that they belong somewhere, that they belong to a community of people that are committed to their well-being. And I I will say that I one Thanksgiving, one young woman couldn't come to my home for Thanksgiving, uh, a young woman that I was mentoring. And so I went to her home and brought Thanksgiving food. And she was showing me around her apartment and her car and everything that she had going for her. She was so proud. And I said, Lavana, how, you know, what to what do you attribute all the success that you've had? And she said, she looked at me and she said, you know, Diane, it's because I had someone who believed in me. And I think that's what when you belong to a family or to a community, you you know that there is someone who believes in you. And that when when you have someone who believes in you, then you begin to believe in yourself. That is really powerful. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 6:20

I also often think that if you're really well prepared for life, it's still hard at 18. Right. Absolutely. Yes. But all of the other things that they've gone through going to into foster care in the first place, all of the different placements, all of the moving around, moving schools, you know, many of them don't have the education that someone with a more stable upbringing would have. Um, who's going to teach you to drive? You know, like there's so many things of what happened before 18 that also creates such um dismal outcomes that we see. Now, probably not for the youth in San Diego. Thanks for all the work y'all are doing. So, what role, let's talk about belonging. And when a youth doesn't have belonging, when they lack belonging, how does that play into their dismal outcomes of become, you know, being an adult without knowing how to be an adult and without a community to support them?

SPEAKER_00 7:25

Well, that's a great question. And as we're alluding to it, resources are great. You need resources. But we we decided that the biggest gap that exists for these young people was that lack of connection, community, and belonging. You you probably know people who have got a lot of stuff, but they they don't have that that sense of connection and they're and they're loss with all the things that they have. It's it's not enough. Human beings need connection. It's it's it's fundamental to who we are as a species, to be, to have a community and a sense of belonging. And the way that really was manifested to me before I became the the CEO of Justin Time, uh I got started in this whole thing. I was working for a TV station uh as their marketing director in community affairs. And after the Columbine shootings, I was listening to all these things about disconnected young men and how they needed to have mentors and coaches. And so I created a campaign to recruit a thousand male mentors by Father's Day that year. So I became a mentor myself. And the young man I was mentoring, it was, it became him and his sister. He was nine when I met him and she was eight. And so I started mentoring them and and they both went into the foster care system soon after. And it was not the first time they had been in foster care. So I was in their life then. They allowed me to still stay connected to them, the foster care system. So I'd known them for about three years. And Jeanette Day, who was one of those people with Diane, she was their lawyer. So that's how I got to meet Jeanette. So anyway, uh Boleyn, who was a young woman, so at 11 years old, so I'd known her for three years, she was at my apartment, we were watching Shrek for the twelfth time, because she really liked that movie, Shrek. But she turned to me in the middle of the movie and she said, Why are you still here? As a curious question. Because I had been in her life for three continuous years. And she was not used to that. So she was trying to figure it out. And I thought nobody should be asking that question. No young person should be asking why they still have an adult who cares for them in their life. You know? So so that's the fundamental thing. And and to to be in a place where that becomes your normal, where you don't expect that people care for you in your life on an ongoing basis, people you can rely on, that that creates a tremendous void. And of course, children, if they're not getting that, they're trying to figure out what's wrong with them. That nobody loves them enough to to be there for them. And that's to your point, that's what gets carried through where these young people are trying to figure out what it is that's wrong with them that creates a situation where people are not there for them. And so part of what we do at just in time is help to reverse that mentality and that and that sort of inward blaming of themselves for not being enough that they deserve to be loved. And so we we surround them with people. Every every uh service that we offer, every resource we offer comes attached with a relationship. Everyone. So at the end of the day, when they're with just in time, they might have five different adults that they're connected to. They're also connected to our staff who are majority lived experience in foster care, who are giving, who understand what they've been through and are saying, yeah, there's nothing wrong with you. There's stuff that happened to you, and and we're going to help you to get to that next level. And then they also form a community among themselves where they reinforce that sense of belonging. So now they have their community that they create. So we don't have clients, we have participants in our community. Everybody is part of creating that sense of belonging for each other. So it's an empowerment as opposed to we're here to fix you and and to fix your problems. It's we're empowering you to join this community and help other people get that same sense of belonging that you want and you understand, and you're getting it also in that process.

SPEAKER_02 11:48

And I think to your point, Don, our age range is 18 to 26. But then when a participant turns 27, they become alumni. And then as alumni, they're still part of our community, and that lasts for a lifetime. Um, just as an example, with our college-bound service, you get laptop, printer, supplies for your dorm furnishings, but you also get connected to a volunteer, and the expectation is that that volunteer from the community will be there to guide you along the way all the way to graduation and beyond. If you're in our financial fitness service, you're getting training on how to budget and manage money and save and all these different things, but you also have a financial fitness advisor whom you're meeting with regularly to just give you encouragement and guidance as you go through that. So every service has that connection to a volunteer. And as Don said, you're also doing this with other participants, other youth, and you're seeing how well they're doing. Well, if they can do it, you know, maybe I can do it. So I think that's what belonging does too, is it it gives you role models, belonging, but it also gives you fellow travelers, right? It gives you others that you that you can look to as part of your your tribe. You need more than one person. And and you definitely need people that are doing this because they care about you, not because they are paid to do it. Because I think that's what foster youth have been in foster care. There are social workers that are paid to care about you, right? But then after you turn a certain age, they're gone. They're not there. You think, well, that that was my really good friend. No, they're gone. We we want to, that's what we're creating, something very different from that. These are relationships that in best case scenario, these relationships go on for a lifetime. And I think, Don, you might you always give the example of of uh a young woman who s met her advisor through financial fitness and right.

SPEAKER_00 14:00

She she came to us at 19, and her goal in doing financial fitness, which is teaching people about money, their relationship about money, saving and all of that stuff. Her goal was to buy a house in San Diego at some point. So this is a 19-year-old in San Diego where buying a house here for anybody is it's like a big goal. So, but that's what she wanted to do. So she got this financial advisor. He started working with her. When she was 32, she bought a house. And he was still working with her that whole time.

SPEAKER_03 14:32

13 years later.

SPEAKER_00 14:34

He was at her he was at her wedding when she got married. He was there for the whole thing because now he was part of her community, part of her support system.

SPEAKER_02 14:44

And another example of that is a young woman who at one of, and again, we have community events and activities, and you don't just meet volunteers through services, you might meet them at one of our events that we do, right? And I remember there was one young woman, uh, Victoria, and she met um one of our volunteers at one of our, what was it, I think it was a holiday party. And in the course of their conversation, what came up is that Victoria had never celebrated uh Christmas. And so she invited her to come over to her home and to bake Christmas cookies and to decorate a tree. And that's how their relationship started. And then it it evolved into, and Victoria was a college student, she was going there on her holidays to even stay at their home when she didn't have, you know, lodging during the holiday time. Uh, she'd go over there to do her laundry. When she went to study abroad, they gave her their air miles to pay for her air air flight over, and they are still connected today. And I think it's been about 15 years, and she is she is like their daughter that they view her as their daughter, and she views them as her parents. And she said to me one time that in as difficult as her childhood was, that what she realizes now is through just in time, she has this amazing family that she wouldn't have had, you know, and all the opportunities and and all the uh love that's come into her life it through many channels, you know, um has really is such a blessing and she sees it as a blessing.

SPEAKER_03 16:28

What do you contribute what do you contribute to the fact that you have created this entire culture of people creating belonging for each other?

SPEAKER_00 16:41

Well, I think it was very it was very intentional. Um when Diane f helped start uh just in time, the idea was that we were gonna provide resources and fill in all those gaps, and we hoped that that people would make the connections. And when I came on board, based on that story I told you, I I knew that connection was critical. And so I said, okay, we're gonna flip that around. We're here to create a community, we're here to get connections, and then the resources are gonna be on top of that. So everything is intentionally about creating those connections. So, volunteers, we need to recruit a lot of volunteers. We need to have something associated with everything that we do. And we don't talk about having programs, we have services and resources. Because this program is like a fixed thing we're gonna put you into. A service is what do you need when you walk through the door? What's the resource you need when you walk through the door? Three people come in, they do three different things. Because that's what they need, not where we're telling them this is what you need. What tell us what you need, and then we're gonna do it, and then we're gonna have a person who is walking you through that. You're not out there doing it alone. There's always somebody there. And and also we because forming those kinds of connections is not something that you can really make happen, it sort of has to happen. Uh so different volunteers, there might be a volunteer that you have who just helps you to get that entry-level job, they help you to do what you need to get there, and that's sort of more finite. But then there's somebody else that is the person you want to go to a movie with, and you're gonna talk about other stuff that's in your life, and they might be long-lasting. And my my model for that way of looking at things is that when I was growing up, I had an uncle who helped me buy my first car because he was great at car buying. He was divorced, married, and divorced from the same person three times, so he was not the relationship person for me. So, so at just in time, you have all these different people you're connected to. Nice. And they do different things. And so the volunteers don't have to be everything to them because that's not how it works in real life. So much pressure. Yeah, so much pressure, and you can't you can't do it.

unknown 18:57

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 18:57

And and also you don't just have one person you're hanging on to. So that person moves away or something. Now you're back where you started. You have a whole web of people that you're connected to.

SPEAKER_02 19:09

Well, we actually have over 700 volunteers. Uh, and so it it it's it's a lot. And then we're constantly measuring, right, the impact of our of our of just in time. And we get, we do surveys and we ask for feedback. And what our youth tell us is that in their feedback is that having those people to count on, to go to, that is one of the most critical things. As a matter of fact, we did an alumni survey, and one of the most popular services at that time when that survey went out was financial fitness, right? But within financial fitness, the one most important thing, according to these alumni, was the financial fitness advisor. Having that advisor as part of their financial fitness training is what to them was the most. So we're we're really trying to, you know, we've been trying, always trying to pay attention to what the feedback is from the youth themselves. And as a matter of fact, what another thing Don has done, which I think is so great, is whenever we're starting something new, we have a focus group with our participants, with our youth, with our alumni. And we ask them their opinions about what it should look like, what it should include, you know, what really matters. And I think that this whole it started with Don's vision, and then this has been reinforced throughout the years, that this does seem to also be what our participants, our youth, our alumni tell us has impacted them most.

SPEAKER_00 20:44

And I think the point there is that they own this. It's not, it's not something over here. We're not an agency that they're a part of. Yeah. This is their community that they help create and they help to make better. So financial fitness used to be just one thing where you did match savings. Now it's three, it's three phases because we said, so what's missing? Oh, we need to do first something about, before we get to the savings thing, we need to do something about our relationship with money because it's I don't I don't even know. I came from a family where as soon as we got money, you had to spend it because you didn't know when you were going to have money again. So that's how I've treated money, but that doesn't really work. So it's your relationship with money is just starting there, then it's saving for like a rainy day and emergency fund, and then it it's doing the match savings for some asset that you want from the future. But then again, it's that they told us, hey, you're asking me to save, but I have all this debt that I had from before I got here. So we said, okay, we're not only going to do matches for saving, we're gonna do matches for debt reduction. So you have a certain amount of money to reduce your debt, we're gonna match it so you can get out of that sooner, because we can't expect you to be saving money if you still have that. So that that Makes sense to us.

SPEAKER_02 22:01

Right. I think too that um something that was said recently by an alumni, she's in her, I think, mid to late 30s. And recently I had a we had a conversation with her, and she was talking about all the ways just in time benefited her, but now she's she's in her life, she's got children, she has her profession, she has her whole life, right? And she said that what's wonderful for her about just in time is now it's something that like lives in her head, lives in her heart. Like it's always there, even though she's not directly doing things, you know, with our with our services or with our community. And I love that because I think in a healthy family, when you leave the family, you should be able to be out on your own doing your thing. But you always know that you have that family, right? That's there. And I when she said that, I just thought that is so beautiful because that is to me the goal of a healthy family is not to have children dependent on you the rest of your life. That's not belonging. To me, belonging is when they're there in your mind, in your heart. Uh and and that's the important, that's the belonging piece that I think is is so critical for all human beings.

SPEAKER_00 23:17

I I remember somebody once talked about home as being the place where you know you can go if you have to go there.

unknown 23:25

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 23:26

Yeah, exactly.

SPEAKER_02 23:28

Exactly.

SPEAKER_03 23:29

Yeah, that's um, I have a I have a story for you, and I don't, I don't know that you know this, but I've been, of course, following your work, your work for a few years now as we're setting the foundations for Elevate Villages. And um in doing so, I ran across your Shark Tank competition. And through that, I knew that one of the uh finalists or winners is uh Michael Potterf. And I can say his name because he was actually on our very first episode of the Melania podcast. And it's actually due to him that this podcast is going because when I need when I realized I needed to do a podcast, I was like, oh, like there were just too many pieces. And I'm like, I don't even know where to go. So I was like, wait, I think that Michael from Just in Time was gonna start a marketing company when he won Shark Tank or with you know the finalist money. And so I called him. I like through just in time, it took me a while. I finally got connected to him. And the story he tells of when he first came to just in time. Again, I don't know if you know it, but a friend of his who was also a lived experience youth had told him, Oh, yeah, go. I think he needed a laptop, something for school. And they're like, Oh yeah, go, they'll help you. And he didn't even go, like the first two or three times. And whenever he'd run into this friend or this guy, he'd say, Oh, did you go? He's like, Yeah, right. What are they gonna make me go through? I'm probably not gonna qualify. Like all of those things because of the past, like all of the negative things he'd experienced. He was like, I almost didn't give him a chance. And he said, I went and I got like the laptop. And then I kept kind of looking around, wondering, okay, when are they gonna come get it back? Or when, like, when does the other shoe fall? And he's like, then it was the second thing I needed and they provided. And then the third thing, I was a little quicker to go and ask, and and they helped me. And so his story was just so beautiful. And I don't know if he told it to you, that it was that slow, consistent, you kept your arms open, you kept creating belonging so that even though his wounds from the past made him go, like, yeah, probably this isn't for real.

SPEAKER_00 25:41

Right.

SPEAKER_03 25:42

The longer it was for real, the more he felt like he belonged. Sure. And so um, it's a beautiful, beautiful thing. And so I have also benefited from all of your work in that I had a wonderful um advisor to help me start the podcast.

SPEAKER_02 25:57

Wow. Thank you for sharing that, Melissa. That's really I did not know that story. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 26:03

I I just want to say one of the things that it comes to mind from that. So I define trust. It's not like I trust you or I don't trust you. It's I trust you to do the thing you've shown me I can count on. And so for our young people, when we first meet with them, they have been taught that people will make promises and not deliver them. People will say they're gonna be there and then they're not there. And so that is the story I'm hearing from you from Michael, which is he's just going by what his experience has been. And so it takes a while that he has a different experience to say, oh, I can trust them to do this thing. That they're actually going to do what they say they're gonna do, and they're not gonna treat me as if there's something wrong with me, and have to prove myself that I actually deserve the thing that I need. So that's that's what we do. Fortunately, we have all of these young people who are who are basically ambassadors and and uh supporters of of of what we say, that they convinced their friends to to come and try it out to see if it will work. So that's how we built this community. And and we we say now that we have about 3,600 youth that we're engaged with. That's not necessarily they're getting a service, but they're part of the community. And an example of that was this we had a Thanksgiving uh dinner, which we do every year, where we invite our participants and alumni and some volunteers to come and we have Thanksgiving dinner today. And part of it is everybody goes around and says what they're grateful for. So at the last time we did it, there was this young man who stood up and said, I'm grateful for all the things you've done for my family, and I didn't recognize him. And then he said, Well, I know I'm 17, and I said, Well, we you're not even at the age where we would serve you, so what do we do for you? Well, he said, Well, it's not me, it's my mother. My mother. She she was part of just in time in 2006, and she was there, and he's she's still part of the community from 2006. And she's the one who said, Just in time is not a place.

SPEAKER_02 28:09

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 28:10

It's something that I have inside me.

SPEAKER_02 28:12

You know, Don, I think going back to something you said earlier, the other thing is that our youth are in their life growing up, if they made a mistake, they'd be kicked out of one home and be sent to another one. It happens a lot. Yeah. Um and matter of fact, one young man was in 34 placements by the time he was nine years old, believe it or not. So, one thing that Justin timed that I think is beautiful is that you can make a mistake and we will still be there for you. As long as you are willing to learn from your mistake, right? And you're you have a commitment to your own progress as a human being, we will be there for you. And I think that's wonderful because I think everybody needs to be able to make mistakes. And that's part of the reason that having that range of 18 all the way up to age till you turn 27 is so important. Because you need that time to learn, to grow, to get the basics, but also to make mistakes and then recover from your mistakes. And then you begin to see that okay, this is part of life. You make a mistake, you recover from the mistakes. So you become less afraid to take risks and to make mistakes. And I think that's that's also a that's really relevant to what we're talking about today. You know, I think when you belong somewhere, you don't just get kicked out because you make a mistake.

SPEAKER_00 29:31

Right.

SPEAKER_02 29:32

Right.

SPEAKER_00 29:32

Yeah. And and that that mentality about I can't make mistakes, or you know, that's the end of things. Even when we started doing employment help, we needed to to coach the youth because people would make a mistake at work and then they would say, Well, I'm just gonna quit because they're gonna fire me anyway.

SPEAKER_04 29:49

Yeah. Yes.

SPEAKER_00 29:50

After the first thing. So we had to say, no, no, no. That's just they're giving you some constructive input, but you don't have to quit.

SPEAKER_02 29:58

So I'm gonna quit before I get fired. Yeah, right. Wait a minute. That's not how this works, right?

SPEAKER_03 30:04

Because I don't want to be told again that I don't fit here. Exactly. So let me just self-remove and then I don't have to hear that again and again.

SPEAKER_00 30:12

And that's where some of the self-sabotage comes from, too, because it's say, ah, I'm just gonna get out of here, or I'm not gonna show up just to see if you're really serious about meeting with me. So I'm not gonna show up to see if you'll if you'll go away. Oh, I knew that was gonna happen.

SPEAKER_01 30:24

Yep.

SPEAKER_00 30:25

And so I'm it's so it verifies my expectation. So getting past that is part of what that experience of belonging actually does. It goes back to what Diane said. When you're in that space, you start to figure out, oh, I can I don't have to be perfect. I can make a mistake, I can, I can learn from what I'm doing, I can get better, and these people are still going to be around me even if I make a mistake.

SPEAKER_02 30:50

I think another beautiful thing about belonging is that you learn from what other people are doing. So for example, um therapy used to be a had a huge stigma attached to it because apparently therapy, when you're in care, in foster care, you are forced to go to a therapist.

SPEAKER_00 31:11

And it's not for you, it's for the other people to get what they want.

SPEAKER_02 31:15

Right, exactly.

SPEAKER_00 31:16

By fixing you.

SPEAKER_02 31:17

Right. And and you view it as a very negative thing. But here at just in time, we actually have a mental wellness center with free on-site therapy. And what we've learned is that now it's it's almost like a uh a badge of a badge of courage or a badge of achievement. And and someone will just be there and say, excuse me, I gotta go to my therapy appointment. It's like everybody now views therapy as this really positive thing because a number of people are benefiting from it. We've all benefited from it. And so that's the understanding. Right.

SPEAKER_00 31:54

Choice, choice is the big thing. People who are in foster care don't get to make any choices. People are always telling them this is what you have to do. Right. And that's what Corey says in that video. Other places you have to do things, right? We're doing it because we want to do it.

SPEAKER_01 32:09

Right. Right. Exactly.

SPEAKER_03 32:12

Yeah, I think that's so um the one thing that if you had a relatively normal upbringing at some points in your growing up in your adolescence, you had a voice, you had some choices, and our youth didn't.

SPEAKER_00 32:31

Right.

SPEAKER_03 32:32

You know, they just that's taken away from them. You know, some agency tells them where they're going and what they're doing. They don't have those steady relationships. Um, so I think the first thing that I that I f how I found just in time in in my research was your mentorship program, the way you use the coach approach. And so tell me about how you came into deciding how to best train people to mentor the youth. I was in a couple of mentoring programs earlier in my life that probably got it wrong. And so the way you're doing it, because I know other models, I was so impressed. Let's start with um empower parties. What are empower parties?

SPEAKER_02 33:17

I guess that's that's for me to to to respond to. Um so, like many nonprofits, we used to have a an annual gala, basically, a celebration. And it was the usual thing, you know, the live auction, the silent auction, the paddle raise, all of that. And then when the, as a matter of fact, uh three days before our empower party in was that 2020?

SPEAKER_00 33:43

2020.

SPEAKER_02 33:43

Yeah, the pandemic had occurred, and and we everybody had to shut everything down. So three days before our annual event, where we made a lot of the money that we count on to run our organization, it was shut down. So, needless to say, that was very challenging. Uh, but what we did, we we we reached out to the community and everybody that had was a sponsor and said, Look, would you convert your sponsorship to a direct contribution? They all said yes. So we ended up fine. But the following year, we could still could not hold a group event. Nobody would come. And I don't even think it was still even allowed. So what we did is we decided to have these things called empower parties. And we held them at a restaurant where it could be outdoors. So nobody was inside a closed room, smaller number of people, 75 to 100 outdoors, right? Instead of having one event, we had five events, five of them in different regions of San Diego where our most of our supporters live. Everybody came and everybody loved it because what we did is we would have a table of eight, six supporters or visitors or guests, and two of our uh either our youth or alumni or our staff sitting at the table. The feedback that we got was that this was so great because you could actually have a conversation. You could get to know this youth, uh, they could get to know you. It was very meaningful conversation. We didn't do the live auction or the silent auction or even a paddle raise. We just put a pledge card on the table, right? And we ended up doing making much more money from the empower parties than from the annual event. And what's beautiful about it is that it's so connected to our mission of connection. And even before the empower parties, every year we have an etiquette dinner where we have a simulated party, dinner party with the tablecloth, the food, everything set up, just like it would be at the Empower Party. And our youth and staff and alumni get to come together and learn a little bit. We have an etiquette instructor who's hilarious and really fun. It's it's so much fun. And you learn all about, you know, where silverware gets said and how to start conversations or how to answer difficult questions, um, you know, even about um, you know, wine glasses and the whole thing. So they when when our participants come to an empower party, they are prepared. You know, they as a matter of fact, they probably have better etiquette than our the guests, right?

SPEAKER_03 36:24

I was gonna say, like, what amazing skills. Yeah, I mean, even if it's preparing them for that party, like those are life skills to know how to show up at a at a formal dinner to how to start a conversation.

SPEAKER_02 36:39

Just to give you an example of one of our participants, and he's now a very successful person in the in the uh venture capital field. Every time he came to an empower party, he got his job for the next summer. He was in college. So, and I remember because the very first one that he got was um he sat at a table with the owner of Coyote Ugly, the restaurant saloon. I don't even know if they're still around, but uh, and she gave him his first summer job as a server. And then the next empower party that he came to, he uh at the time he was studying, I think, uh something around physical therapy, and he got an internship for that summer at a physical therapy office. Every summer he had a job that was generated by who he met at that party in the spring, because our parties are always in the spring, in April and May. So that's just one, and I'll give you one other example that's so much fun. And this is recent. Remember Victoria? I talked about earlier. So Victoria also is very successful, and she's in the field of recruiting in the tech world, right? Okay. Um, but she's been wanting to move up, and we knew that she was coming to an empower party as an alumni. I think it was maybe two years ago. And so we sat her next to a person who's very successful in the IT world and in the recruit, recruiting uh field. And we sat them next to each other. And I remember after the event was over, she came up to me and said, Oh my goodness, Diane, you won't believe this. I sat right next to somebody who's helping me get my next job. And I'm thinking, well, yeah, we kind of did that intentionally. We put you together for a reason. So that's the beauty of uh community because you have these services, you have these activities, and we're always bringing people together because you never these these connections happen organically. They're not forced, right? And you do your best to you know be thoughtful about where you're placing people at an empowered party table because it could make a big difference in their lives. And and I do remember one other young man who um is in the biotech field, and we sat him next to a renowned scientist. Uh, he and his wife have been supporters for a long time. This it's more the wife that's been the volunteer, not the scientist. But we knew that he was coming. So we put them next to each other, and the the scientist was so thrilled because here is somebody that was going through what he went through when he was in his early 20s. And now he got to share his wisdom and experience and connections with this young person. And it's just, I don't know, it just brings so much joy, not just to the youth, but to the to the volunteer or to the the person who's, you know, older, more has already created success in their lives. And what better feeling than to share that, to know that you're sharing that with a younger person and possibly totally changing the trajectory of that person's life.

SPEAKER_00 39:56

You know, the other thing this brings up is that Harvard research about social mobility.

SPEAKER_02 40:02

Yes.

SPEAKER_00 40:02

Where they did a big study and they were looking for what are the main determinations of how somebody moves from like a lower economic status to higher ones, and they looked at education, they looked at geography, they looked at everything. And what they came up with was that if a person who's in a lower economic uh status gets connected to somebody at a higher economic status, that is the major number one determinant of that person moving up. It's tooth who they get connected to. So that's why going to college sometimes becomes that that thing for people. They meet people at college and that moves them. Or they go to a party and they meet somebody and they get connected to that person and that becomes that. So it's just it goes back to that old thing about who you know, right, is the most important thing to make that happen.

SPEAKER_02 40:50

They were looking for the key factor in upward economic mobility. And they did this study with millions of people, and they thought it was going to be education or employment, but no, it was just what Don said. It was about the connections with people that who are coming from a background, as you said, where there is not that opportunity, connecting with people who have had that opportunity and have succeeded because of that opportunity, bringing them together. That was the one key factor in upward economic mobility. And for us, of course, we already knew that, but it was great having that research from a, you know, from a Harvard uh researcher who was substantiating what we had already learned from our own experience was true.

SPEAKER_03 41:39

You know, what I'm hearing is that it's again kind of going back to intentionality, but that your intentionality isn't to run a great nonprofit or to get more donors or investors. Your intentionality is the human beings. How do we create value for the human? How do we create resources for the humans? How do we connect humans? And I think that sits with me so beautifully because right now the world is so divided. People are, you know, living their lives on a screen. Other parts of the world are so fractured, relationships are fractured, families are fractured, like it's everybody out for themselves right now. And what you've demonstrated and what you've been working on two plus decades is so human. And I don't think there's any belonging if there's not humans. And so that beautiful, beautiful net that you've woven for people and that then you empower them to weave for themselves, it it's so huge. And I think my work around belonging, like it just kind of all I I've been working on it, and then one day it all sort of clicked. I was like, as humans, we all belong to each other.

SPEAKER_00 42:58

Yes.

SPEAKER_03 42:59

All belong to each other. And if one human is hurting, we're all less than we could be.

SPEAKER_00 43:06

Right. Um so and and I I want to reinforce what you're saying, which is without that belonging, without that connection, it's that that is not a nice thing to have. It's a vital thing. It's an essential thing. And when we don't have it, things start to unravel. And if and if we don't recognize that and act on that with intention, it's gonna come apart.

SPEAKER_02 43:34

And and I think to build on what you just said, Don, for me, belonging brings joy. Yes. I feel so much joy in belonging, and I have seen so much joy for our participants and our alumni. Right. And they connect it. They say, actually, out they they openly say, it's because I feel like I belong. Right? So there's joy for our participants. And alumni, and there's a lot of joy for our volunteers and our supporters, and not even the people that are not volunteers but support us financially, right? So I think that what I have seen is that there are so many people that want to give back. They want to include others in their world of success. They don't know how to do that in a safe way. So it really helps to have an organization like Justin Time because they know it's safe. We vet our volunteers, we vet our youth. It's safe for our volunteers, it's safe for our uh for our youth. And I think that having seen how much joy this gives people, and then our volunteers share with other volunteers. You gotta, you gotta be part of this organization. It's so much fun. It brings so much joy. It's not for everybody. Some people would rather be involved with a with an animal organization, you know, like being with animals. That brings them a lot of joy, and there's belonging in that too, right? But I think that um joy for me is is what it's brought me so much joy, and I see so much joy around me. And so just want to say that.

SPEAKER_00 45:09

Well, I I'll say one other thing. There's a there's a guy, his name is David White, he's a poet, and at the end of one of his poems, it it ends with whatever or whoever doesn't bring you alive is too small for you, which I I really like that because I know in my own journey I would work someplace, it would sort of get too small because I wouldn't learn anything anymore, and I couldn't be a catalyst, so I've moved to the next thing. And so I'd never worked at the same job for more than three years because I would keep moving to another place where I could keep growing. So I've been adjusting time now in this job for 16 years. Because my purpose is to be a catalyst, is to learn something new every day, and it's to make significant connections, and I've been able to do all those three three things for the last 16 years. So that's perfect for me. The other thing about David Wyatt, he wrote a book called The Three Marriages. He said, There's no such thing as work-life balance, it's integrated, your life is one thing. And he said, Here are the three marriages you have in your life, it's who you're with. Things get hard, but you love that person until you get through it. It's what you do at work, things get hard. You love what you're doing, you get through it. And the third marriage is with yourself, things get hard, you love yourself, you get through it. If you have those three marriages, life is good. My life is good.

SPEAKER_02 46:28

And you know, Don, I think that speaks to the foundation of just in time. So we're always looking at the whole person. It's not just about, like we do help our youth set up their first apartments, and they get to choose what the color scheme is going to be. They get to choose the furniture, the style of furniture. Volunteers are helping them to, you know, get everything moved in, but it's their choice. It's not just about setting up your first home, it's about growing as a human being. It's about your profession that you choose or that you move toward, a career. It's about your education. It's about learning to drive. You know, it is about your wellness and about your wellness and not just uh we mentioned therapy before. At just in time, we actually have eight healing practices that have been proven to mitigate the impact of toxic stress from trauma and childhood. So we have all these things that are available to everybody, our staff and our and our youth. And it's around nutrition, exercise, mindfulness, healthy relationships, you know, all the things that have been proven to help you feel well as a human being. And I think that that holistic approach is it is about the whole person. It's not just about one thing. That's why we started with providing furnishings to apartments, but now you've grown into this ecosystem, right? Of support. And I think that's how we've grown as an organization. And I think that's how every organization needs to grow with the input from the people you're serving about what works, what doesn't work, what is needed, you know, what is not needed, what what works well, what doesn't.

SPEAKER_03 48:13

I feel like there's a theme in addition to belonging, a theme of wholeness today. Like you don't have, hey, this program if you need it, but you're just sitting down with the person and looking at their whole situation, their whole life, and then able to move them into more wholeness with themselves. And then therefore, more wholeness with your extended support system and more wholeness in the world.

SPEAKER_00 48:37

Right.

SPEAKER_02 48:38

We couldn't have said it better. That is that is exactly that's you nailed it.

SPEAKER_01 48:44

Um, so what question have I not asked you yet that I should?

SPEAKER_02 48:54

You know, you brought up Coach Approach, which is the training that we do for our volunteers. Yes. We help our volunteers learn how to actively listen and then to ask curious and powerful questions. And our volunteers tell us that this is something often they tell us it's something they never learned how to do. It's not something that we are trained to do uh in our society. We are trained to get to the right answer first. We are trained to come up with solutions, right? The people that have the biggest hardest time with coach approach are mothers and CEOs. So makes sense. I and the reason I'm bringing this up is that for myself personally with the coach approach, what I've learned is how important it is to be present with another person. And we do that through the act of listening and the curious and powerful questions. And it's it's it's making the intention to set aside whatever your own agenda is, to be present with another person, with their agenda, with who they are. And I think we're lacking that's something that's lacking overall in our society today. And I think along with belonging and wholeness, we need to learn ways to communicate and to deepen our understanding of each other rather than go to judgment or making assumptions or having opinions. I think belonging involves really making that commitment to understanding someone and to working on solutions together. And for us, we believe that all of our youth have their own inner wisdom. They have it, they just might not be able to access it. So the coach approach, the purpose of it is to shine a light on their path so they can see their way forward. Not to try to get them to be on our path, but their own path. What does that look like? Where do they want to go? How to get there? That's the purpose of the coach approach training. And I do think that that is a pathway to uh a more meaningful relationship and to a more meaningful life.

SPEAKER_00 51:18

Yeah. And I I the image that comes to mind while Diane was talking, it's walking alongside somebody having a conversation, not pulling them or pushing them or leading them, but walking alongside them. So that's what we try to do at just in time.

SPEAKER_03 51:35

And you're doing it so well. Thank you for all of your impact. Also, just in time has put a book out called Life Changing Choices. You can see I didn't enjoy it at all. More of a manual for people uh who want to do impact and want to create a healthier world for these youth. Um, definitely need to check out this book. I will put links to the Justin Time for Foster Youth and the book and any links that appear that apply to us today, I'll be putting down in the show notes for our audience to check out. Um Diane and Dawn, you have started a program called 100K, which I am so honored to be a part of. That's helping anybody out there. This is my take on it, you might need to correct me. Anyone out there who does want to come into this space and create more opportunity and more resources for youth who've aged out of foster care, and that you'll come alongside and help us like figure it out and the the pieces. So why don't you describe it in your own terms, what 100K is and um and how people that might need to be a part of that can can get to can get connected.

SPEAKER_00 52:50

Well, we we really do think that we've hit upon something that has been very successful and has lasting impact. Again, Diane referenced a survey we did uh a while back where we asked our alumni if they had broken the cycle of foster care, and 91% said that they had. So amazing. So that's that's impact. And so we thought we're doing this here, we're doing a good job here. How can we help other people? Because there are all these young people across the country who are aging out of uh foster care who are who don't have this alternative. So that's why we wrote the book, and we called it scaling by sharing. So we're we started reaching out to to people across the country who we thought might want to benefit from this, and we help them to uh to adopt the model, uh, to take shortcuts, you know, so they don't have to go through 20 years to get there, they can do faster. Because our our goal is to is to have the greatest impact we can for the most young people who are out there. And there's there's I keep referencing books. There's a book called The Infinite Game, which is about if you're playing the finite game, there's an endpoint, and then there are winners and losers, and so then you're competing with other people. We don't compete with anybody who wants to do good. If somebody's doing the same thing we do, then they're just worthy rivals. So we can learn from them, they can learn from us, because the infinite game is moving forward on helping as many young people as possible. And that never ends. There's not a point where that's gonna be done because the human race is not gonna reach this part where everything is perfect. So we want to help people, and if you um want to be a part of the 100k community, which is which our goal was to reach a point where we were touching a hundred thousand young people across the country in by 10 years from now, which now is eight years from now.

SPEAKER_02 54:45

And that's by partnering with other organizations with similar missions. So we're already working with uh 20 organizations in 10 states, and it's it's building and growing and and elevate villages.

SPEAKER_00 54:56

Right. And and because it's community-based, we can't go to someplace and create a community. The community is is there, so we want to work with people who can make those communities happen. Right. But we're just helping them to leverage that.

SPEAKER_03 55:12

It's amazing. So the Elevate Villages, we will be taking our national tour a little bit later this year. And we're so excited because we get to go on the road, meet with hopefully I'll get to actually hug you both in person. Um, but meet with people who are making changes all over the country and encourage people, have discussions about belonging. Because the seeds that can be planted, when people like you said, everyone has their own wisdom within them. And if we can talk about belonging and the people who don't belong and how we can welcome them in and how we can provide resources for them, not only can elevate villages grow, but also things that don't even exist right now, and people start thinking and believing and belonging in in, you know, spheres like this, belonging in rooms like this, how much more belonging we can create in the world and how we can heal people around us who were just suffering.

SPEAKER_00 56:11

Right.

SPEAKER_02 56:11

So you're actually going to be traveling across the country to build belonging as a foundation for so many things that are happening in so many places.

SPEAKER_03 56:22

Yeah. Yeah. We're really excited. We have something uh we're working on right now, little uh insider info. They're called belonging circles. And so instead of me going and trying to get on stages, we're gonna be creating experiences where people get to come in and really discover their own belonging, where they belong, where they don't belong, and how to create belonging. So we're gonna be having a really uh dynamic year crossing the country and having meetings all over the place.

SPEAKER_02 56:52

That's really exciting, Melissa. And I would imagine this is going to bring you a lot of joy.

SPEAKER_03 56:57

You know what? It will, it will. Like I just this, all of this work, you know, there I nothing could take me away. Dawn, I identified a lot with what you said. Like you do something and then you get good at, and you're like, okay, I'm bored. Next, next, next. And I think this is definitely a field that it will be very difficult, if not impossible, to get bored in. There's so much to do, and it is so filled with joy to be able to connect with other humans to be able to create belonging.

SPEAKER_02 57:29

Well, please let us know, anyways, that we can be of help to you.

SPEAKER_00 57:33

Yes, for sure.

SPEAKER_02 57:34

It's a worthy endeavor.

SPEAKER_03 57:37

Thank you so much. Well, you showed up today, and that is amazing. All of your wisdom from the past that I've learned, and now sharing it with the belonging podcast audience. Um, Dawn, Diane, thank you so much for being here today.

SPEAKER_00 57:53

Thank you.

SPEAKER_03 57:54

Thank you. This has been the Belonging Podcast by Elevate Villages, where we build belonging together.