Establishing Roots is DCFYI's annual fundraiser. In addition to raising money for our important work, it brings together people from all walks of life and neighborhoods to meet one another and celebrate our mutual commitments to teens in foster care. It's a gathering that grows each year. One that is a celebration, a meal, a silent auction, a chance to hear/learn from a DCFYI teen, volunteer or honoree. And just plain fun.

DCFYI is the only area organization that works exclusively to help older children at risk of “aging out” of foster care find family. We do this by holding regular and fun program events, where teens and adults meet and form relationships naturally. It is these relationships that lead to matches for mentoring, weekend host parenting, and adoption. We also work with aged out youth in a model which matches five to eight other adults to one participant to help youth who lived in foster care achieve goals.

Youth who turn 21 and have not achieved permanency face a much more difficult transition to adulthood than their non-foster care peers. At age 26, more than a third have experienced homelessness; only 6% have completed a two- or four-year college; almost half are not working; and nearly 60% of men and 30% of women have been convicted of a crime. In the last year in DC, nearly 95% of youth living in foster care were people of color, with close to 83% being African American and 13% Hispanic. Across all states in the United States, teens wishing to achieve permanency are less likely to be adopted than their younger peers and teens of color even less so.  So, family life discriminates and reinforces the poverty cycle.

The odds are against program participants but our work to wrap community around them often succeeds, whether in tangible, measurable, financial ways or emotional and supportive ones. Through simple affection and new experiences, we uplift the lives of these underserved teens and young adults and ameliorate their worlds in inestimable ways.