For 14 years Just in Time for Foster Youth has engaged the community to help better transition foster youth ages 18-26 by helping them achieve self-sufficiency and well being for more than 600 youth a year. With a measurable impact. The vision of Louarn and Alan Sorkin, this year’s Legacy Honorees, benefits from the Walk the Talk fundraiser will ensure JIT’s growth and sustainability by engaging prominent members of the community with its mission and the young men and women that it serves.
For 14 years Just in Time for Foster Youth has engaged the community to help better transition foster youth ages 18-26 by helping them achieve self-sufficiency and well being for more than 600 youth a year. With a measurable impact. The vision of Louarn and Alan Sorkin, this year’s Legacy Honorees, benefits from the Walk the Talk fundraiser will ensure JIT’s growth and sustainability by engaging prominent members of the community with its mission and the young men and women that it serves. She mobilized the local community to her cause providing the resources and relationships that these young people need to succeed in life.
Unique in its services utilizes its staff, former foster youth that will join at least 75 in transition foster youth that will lead the evening of dining, entertainment and sharing their personal stories. JIT believes that it is crucial to mobilize the local community as an extended family in helping continue its mission in transitioning this lost age of foster youth, many of which have nowhere to go, no one to turn to as they are set out on their own into adulthood with little or no services.
JIT Development Associate Nathan Brunetta knows this only too well, as Just in Time came to his aid just in the nick of time at the age of 25.
Brunetta went into foster care at the age of 13 along with his younger brother. Coming from a family of drug use and abuse he said going into foster care was no different than any other day.
“We were already in a challenging state as children. So going into foster care was like any other day except we were not being abused anymore. We were in a different home,” said Brunetta.
Even though they were placed with a single male who was helping out looking after them prior to going into the system, Brunetta said that for him, being a younger lost male and having no role models to follow he started drifting and began to disconnect from the home he was in. He made decisions that were not in line with his foster parent and at 17 wound up being kicked out after staying out all night.
“On my own, all I had was a bunch of my clothes and for months on end I would couch surf, stay in cars and there was this constant stage of ‘What’s next?’” he said. “This was nothing I wasn’t accustomed to already but as 18 came along, I was really tired with that lifestyle. Tired of not having anything, tired of not having any support, not knowing what I’m here for or what I’m doing. So this was a different pressure put on me. It wasn’t let me survive, it was what does all of this mean for me?”
That started him on my path to sales as a career. He didn’t have any school and as he started getting into adulthood, life hit him hard. Finances, bills, all of the things he was never taught.
“I had to focus on just staying out of hot water,” he said. “Trying to go back to school and work a full time sales career didn’t work out for me. It was too overwhelming and I couldn’t survive, so I had to drop out of school. In that time, I had gotten to the point at 25 where I was again back into struggle mode, back into surviving.”
Not being taught the basic foundations of how to be, when the sales job didn’t work out or the commission did not come, or something happened that he did not know how to deal with, he said he was right back to when I was 17 years old getting kicked out of the house for the first time.
“I remember being 25, sitting on the coast watching the sun go down just thinking to myself, ‘What am I doing? Who am I? What do I want to do with this life?’” he said.
Short on rent, getting ready to get kicked out of his house, finding himself needing to drop out of school for a second time, Brunetta was a “lost boy” once again. Never having a real family connection he had no clue where to turn to next. But during this time, he was able to reconnect with his older sister. She already had two children and he began spending time with her and his nephews, the first time cultivating a sibling relationship that they never had growing up.
“I remember opening up to her about where I was at and she, being more aware, already knew about Just in Time for Foster Youth. She told me I had to go check it out, that they could help me,” he said.
Brunetta did not want to go. Putting himself in the position of asking for help brought back traumatic memories of standing on a street corner holding a sign, “Will work for food.”
“When really, it was for drugs,” he said. “There was this element of charity or hand outs that I didn’t want to be a part of. It triggered so much emotion and memories of drug addiction, abuse and poverty. It took a little time for me to come to my senses and come to JIT. I walked in nervous, but also confident because I knew I had taken the first step. If you do that, keep your mind open to the opportunities, when you take that first step you’ll have an entourage of support there waiting for you.”
JIT was a challenge because of his age and on the cusp of not being able to take advantage of many of its services, but he did receive rental assistance and guidance. This is when he got to know what JIT was all about and more and more became involved with the organization. His evolvement with the organization grew, and so did Brunetta.
“I was able to be a contributor of ideas to its Bridges to Success program that Phillip Rivers launched,” he said. “It was a group of men championing for these young men and they were real models for me. Not people stepping into a role and acting, but real people that are modeling their life and giving younger me the vision to see the opportunities of who they could be”
He then utilized his own experiences as a peer educator. An amazing experience for him he became more connected with JIT as an organization. After her turned 26 and graduated the program he was able to take the skills he learned in life, his education and his values that he had accumulated over time an develop something that he could give back to the youth that JIT serves. So he volunteered, working with youth and became more connected with the organization. When there was an opening for a staff position he applied and became part of the team that helped him transition his way to a better life.
During this time, his relationship with his older sister grew and three years ago she called him with a question he never saw coming. She wanted to know if he would like to meet their younger half sister who was currently in the foster care system. He had no connection with that part of the family but decided it was worth the effort to try.
“So I got to meet Vanessa for the first time,” he said. “We started brewing this weird, kind of a brother, kind of a person I’m just meeting relationship for about six months, once a week. We’d spend hours just talking and getting to get to know each other a little better.”
Life threw Brunetta another surprise when Vanessa’s foster care mother came to him and said they were moving and unable to take her with them. Her biological family could not help her leaving only two options. Moving to Wisconsin to a family she had never met or going back to being embedded in the foster care system. She was turning 12-years-old.
“My life’s philosophy that I have accumulated over time is keeping it positive,” said Brunetta. “I believe that you can experience a lot of meaning from the things that appear to be negative. So I looked at the opportunity of taking Vanessa and I wanted to offer her that support. So I became her foster parent/new brother. One of the reasons it worked so well in the transition is because Just in Time was right there supporting me. Not only as people to people, but also they gave me guidance with what encouraged me. Being able to help youth lights up my soul. Taking on the responsibility of being a foster parent, a career in sales, I needed that. And they provided that for me. I needed that help during that transition.”
Brunetta got to be the one to experience full circle. Coming from being a participant who was struggling to someone who has stayed, thrived, and am able to take care of someone else and offering them support so they can then design their own story.
“It’s been a great journey so far,” he said. “We as a team were able to get her in to The Bishop’s School in La Jolla. She’s an incredibly smart girl. She goes to school in La Jolla, we live in El Cajon, so every day we get up and drive down the 52 for two hours, get her to school, get her home to do her homework. She’s doing great and we’re still together. I have a girlfriend, she lives with us and helps the whole family dynamic that we have. It takes an army to raise a teenager. I’m finding that out. Or just a really crazy person.”
The best thing Brunetta says about Just in Time is its adaptability that it has not only to the community, but to the youth themselves. An organization that can evolve over time and provide connections and resources not only to the people that are receiving benefits from the organization, but also to the one that are being philanthropic with it.
“There is a high level of ownership with JIT so when we look at what we do like resources, emergency needs, crucial things or you look at a youth that has to drop out of school versus buy food, that’s a real thing,” he said. “JIT will deliver that resource so it makes that decision a little easier. And it works with whatever is going on with them during that time. From a broader perspective, coming from resources JIT realized that it doesn’t matter how much you give somebody, if you are not connected, you’re not connected. As human beings we thrive off connections. Having a deep understanding of that and the impact that connections have on the youth, JIT creates a platform for the community to be involved on a very one-to-one level. Whether working with the youth, in the heart of the organization, this is where JIT gives opportunities for everyone to participate.”
He said the challenge that arises for a lot of foster youth is that when they turn 18, many times what happens is they get about $200, a trash bag for their clothes and are asked to go make it into the world.
“If you ask parents that are well off, have great children with no problems if their child could do that, how many would say yes? It’s a resounding ‘No.’ It’s time, support and a collaborative effort to raise a child to adulthood,” he said. “My entire life I’ve always had questions that have evolved around a certain level of personal depth. You have to get out of your own way, you have to. The more that someone can see an authentic expression from an organization or a person, it encourages more of them getting out of their own way. If you can do that change can happen.”
Just in Time for Foster Youth looks at the critical needs to fill the gaps to ensure that motivated youth achieve their goals of being a self-sufficient adult. It also work diligently in partnering with caring community members who become a lifelong support system for the continuous community of foster youths that it serves. For more information visit Just in Time for Foster Youth at www.jitfosteryouth.org.
Just in Time for Foster Youth will hold its Walk the Talk fundraising celebration on Saturday, March 11 at the Hyatt Regency La Jolla from 6:00 p.m. to 9:30 p.m. For more information or to purchase tickets visit www.jitfosteryouth.org or contact Diane Cox at (858) 705-1705 or email her at Diane@jitfosteryouth.org.
