By MATTHEW MEYER| Reporter
Jacqueline Caster and the Everychild Foundation continued their crusade to help Los Angeles’ underprivileged children in 2017, granting $1 million to Loyola Law School to help train young lawyers as advocates for foster youth.
They’re a particularly vulnerable population that—after experiencing abuse and maltreatment, in many cases—are especially susceptible to the “school-to-prison pipeline.”
Social workers and policymakers use the term to describe discipline approaches that send misbehaving students to prison, often kicking off a cycle of repeat offenses and repeat prison terms.
Reforming the juvenile justice system and representing the young people already ensnared in it are massive undertakings. But fresh off funding the launch of Loyola’s new program and already busy at work on next year’s grant selection, the Palisadian Caster appeared as invigorated as ever.
She sat down with the Palisadian-Post over coffee in The Village just before the New Year, taking a moment to explain how her organization is tackling some of the country’s thorniest youth-related issues, $1 million at a time.
“A product of the ’60s,” Caster said she grew up with a sense that “making cities better places for everyone” was a moral imperative.
A law school graduate, she enjoyed various levels of professional success early in her career, but gravitated toward philanthropic work after the birth of her two children.
“I got involved with a few different groups that benefited children, but I felt like when you joined these groups all they wanted you to do was help put on a gala,” Caster told the Post.
She emphasized that the “gala model”—throwing an annual event to fundraise for a cause—can work very effectively. But Caster also felt that some groups mismanaged or outright wasted funds on the events—or failed to properly vet and follow up with the organizations they support.
“I also felt like they weren’t tapping into my and other people’s highest and best use, intellectually. We had all kinds of other skills and talents.”
Caster founded the Everychild Foundation in 1999 to take a different tack. She based it on the “giving circle” model, a concept “as old as people in the church basement passing the hat around.” Each member of a large collective contributes a (relatively) small financial commitment up front—the rest of the year is spent thoroughly reviewing how best to allocate the sum of those contributions.
And “thorough” is perhaps an understatement. Everychild’s outreach and review process begins before the previous year’s grant has even been awarded. It includes everything from training by a grant consultant to site visits and financial analyses.
A field of roughly 20 narrows to two finalists, who give even more exhaustive presentations.
The runner-up often quickly gains funding from another source because they’ve already been so thoroughly vetted. And the winning cause is awarded a transformative $1 million grant.
Everychild’s 200-woman strong collective has awarded substantial funding to worthy causes for 18 consecutive years.
The recipients have ranged from those that address the mental and medical health of children to tutoring and mentoring services and creating sorely needed new libraries for elementary schools.
Founding the Everychild Integrated Educational and Legal Advocacy Project at Loyola this year takes aim at one of Caster’s most urgent causes: the damaging outcomes of the current juvenile justice system.
Her concerns range from the punitive rather than therapeutic approaches of juvenile probation camps—an issue that led to her fervent involvement in the reimagining of Camp Kilpatrick, a now revolutionary Malibu facility—to the plight of “crossover youth,” foster kids who land in legal trouble and suffer from a lack of mentors or adequate legal representation.
The “psychological taint” of incarceration often never leaves them, Caster told the Post. “And it’s preventable. Foster kids … will tell you the one thing they’re missing in their lives is one caring, consistent adult.”
The new Loyola project is designed to train law students to be fierce defenders for crossover youth, hopefully reducing the group’s high recidivism rate in LA.
Caster and her organization will make sure that mission is being met through regular follow-up reviews, as they do with all their grant recipients.
And in the meantime, it’s on to Everychild’s next selection.
One million more dollars for another worthy cause; Jacqueline Caster and Everychild keep rolling on.
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