Our Mission

Youth4ward serves the foster care children community to improve physical and mental health by working with children’s advocates to protect their rights in the welfare and legal system. 

We aim to build healthy mental and physical strength for San Gabriel Valley’s foster children and their future.  Because of the lack of resources and rigid government regulation, most foster children and parents lack guidance and support in achieving their educational and emotional goals. Our well-rounded team is honored to provide professional assistance, interpersonal workshops, and practical curriculums that directly tackle foster familys’ needs. We contribute to aiding children’s mental needs when they are undergoing rigid regulations, educating foster parents to achieve success in parenting, and holding workshops to teach youth the prevalence of this issue while breaking traditional foster stereotypes. 

Our Vision

Youth4ward was instituted through the founder’s mentorship with Center for the Pacific Asian Family’s (CPAF) community organizers and Rooted Leadership program.Quickly realizing how vast and complex the child welfare systems are in LA County, through various stakeholder interviews with local organizations that encompass child welfare, an interest was found in establishing a social organization. At the end of the project proposal with CPAF, there was the development of Youth4ward, an organization that promotes child welfare through education and local activism efforts that focus on foster care and permanent housing for families and their children.

Sophia Ren, director, has established partnerships, event opportunities, and has been regularly uploading blogs since the start of the organization. Targeting the youth education portion of Youth4ward’s mission, she actively creating additional projects and ideas. She oversees volunteering, outreach, writing, and has implemented a music education program within Youth4ward, using her knowledge and experience from the music world.

Our mission revolves around inherency: About 30% of the children in foster care often struggle with the following issues: blaming themselves and feeling guilty about removal from their birth parents and wishing to return to those parents, even if they were mistreated/ abused by them. Youth4ward supports building vital mental and physical health for foster children and solving their emotional, behavioral, or developmental problems. We contribute to aiding children’s mental needs when they are undergoing rigid regulations, educating foster parents to achieve success in parenting, and holding workshops to teach youth the prevalence of this issue while breaking traditional foster stereotypes.