In March of 2009 I awoke in the middle of the night with a dream still fresh in my mind. I had envisioned myself surrounded with friends, family, and business professionals cutting the red ribbon off  a newly constructed building housing my new business. In this dream their were thousands of children, families, and community members cheering me on in recognition of the services soon to be provided. 

What venture did I dream of starting you ask? After years of working in different systems set up with the intentions of helping youth and families, I had become disheartened with the amount of children and parents that I’d personally worked with who were suffering because of inherent flaws in California’s social services systems. Programs are concerned with the increasing number of children,adolescents, and young adults experiencing crisis as well as those with developmentaland learning disabilities. Parents are concerned with the lack of funding,inappropriate levels of service and the increasingly restrictive service modelsseen in most US-based social service programs. 

My dream was of building something to help parents bridge the gap and navigate through the many different systems of support and programs established to help youth and families in need. My hope was to create a networking hub to assist in connecting families with availableinformation on programs established to help at risk youth, children with special  needs and disabilities, and their families while providing in house hands on services to support them in their development.

From this dream, I began to research, write my business plan, and network with the community to establish the Foster & Banks Walk in Faith Foundation. What makes the Foster & Banks Walk in Faith Foundation so exciting, yet necessary, is that not only can the organization exist and co-habitate with other non-profit and for-profit organizations in this space but it provides additional resources and better hands on services to a highly underserved demographic of children, adolescents, and young adults considered to be “at-risk”, and those with developmental and learning disabilities.