Everychild Foundation Awards $1 Million Toward Youth Center

At a time when the State of California proceeds with more crippling cuts to health services and education, the Pacific Palisades-founded charitable organization Everychild Foundation continues to contribute to improving the future of Los Angeles by donating $1 million to Mar Vista Family Center that will be earmarked to create a new state-of-the-art Youth Center. Founded by Jacqueline Caster nine years ago, Everychild is comprised of 225 Los Angeles women who each donate $5,000 in annual dues in lieu of putting on fundraising events. Since in 2000, Everychild has donated just under $6 million in grants. Prior grants have funded a mobile dental clinic, construction of 15 new libraries in public elementary schools, the renovation and expansion of a child abuse counseling center, the establishment of a youth learning center at a home for troubled teens, and the purchase of a transitional home for emancipating foster youth. Each year, Everychild invites roughly 30 to 50 nonprofit organizations to apply for its single annual grant. Mar Vista Family Center is a grass roots agency serving a low-income, densely populated and gang-ridden neighborhood adjacent to the only federal housing project in West Los Angeles. A two-story, 11,500 square foot Youth Center will be created to allow Mar Vista to clear its 300-child waiting list by increasing its program capacity by 50 percent, from 650 to about 1,000 kids. On March 24, Everychild broke ground on a project for its 2007 recipient, Heart of Los Angeles Youth (HOLA), a multi-cultural center that offers fine arts, athletic and education programs for more than 1,300 underserved youth annually throughout the city. The funds will transform the Lafayette Park Community Center, located in a dangerous park in the blighted Rampart District, into a safe space for neighborhood children. Soon, more than 2,300 at-risk youth will have an enriching safe haven with learning spaces and a wireless technology center at the L.A. Recreation and Park center, thanks to Everychild’s $1 million dollar grant. Everychild Foundation began when Jacqueline Caster recruited people to take part in her unique humanitarian project. She sought the assistance of many in the Palisades community, including Caster’s Highlands neighbors, founding members Cynthia Alexander and Debra Colbert. About 56 women participated in making the first grant of $230,000, awarded to QueensCare, which went to the outfitting of a new mobile dental clinic serving students in low income elementary schools within L.A.U.S.D. Everychild also raised the money for the new playground, which was recently unveiled at L.A. Orthopaedic Hospital. ‘Soon, that number of children will almost double with the opening the new playground where more than 128,000 children are anticipated to visit it annually,’ Caster said. In addition to Everychild’s efforts, satellite organizations with similar charitable ambitions have mushroomed. ‘We have already directly inspired the creation of seven other foundations based on our model, the newest being the Women’s Fund of Northern Santa Barbara County,’ Caster said. ‘They just launched themselves this month and we will be very excited to watch their progress.’ Created in 2004 after its founders read an article about Everychild, Women’s Fund has since donated more than $1.4 million in the Santa Barbara area, which includes some very large matching grants. In addition to Women’s Fund, Everychild spawned the creation of the local Women Helping Youth, and the Today and Tomorrow’s Children’s Fund at Mattel Children’s Hospital, which, in three years, has amassed some $400,000 for medical research projects. Heather DuBoef (sister of Everychild member Tawny Saunders) works for the three year-old Nevada Women’s Philanthropy Foundation, which, at the end of this year will have donated more than $1 million. Everychild member Robin Broidy founded the AVIVA Platinum Associates, serving troubled girls, while Everychild member Stefania Magidson founded the Blue Heron Foundation, which assists Romanian orphans.