Everychild Foundation Donates $600K+ to Optimist Youth Center

Endowed with a $600,000-plus grant from the Everychild Foundation of Pacific Palisades, an Optimist youth agency has broken ground in Highland Park on a long-awaited education and treatment center for the at-risk youth the agency serves.

  To be known as the Everychild Foundation Youth Learning Center, the $5-million building will encompass state-of-the art academic and vocational training opportunities designed specifically to serve the needs of severely disturbed adolescents. The 21,200-sq.-ft., two-story center will provide space for high school classrooms, art, music and computer workshops, a library, community training conference room and space for mental health therapy and vocational training.

Palisadian Jacqueline Caster, president and founder of The Everychild Foundation.

Ona and Phil Wexler of Pacific Palisades at the groundbreaking of Optimist Youth Homes & Family Services' The Everychild Foundation Youth Learning Center.

The groundbreaking ceremony was held November 24 at the Optimist Youth Homes and Family Services' seven-acre campus in Highland Park.

"We are extremely grateful to the Everychild Foundation, which has played a major role in making this dream a reality," said Silvio John Orlando, executive director of OYHFS. "This facility is a monumental development for the hundreds of youth and families we serve every year and who depend on us to provide them the best possible care."

The Everychild Foundation supports organizations that help children facing disease, abuse, neglect, poverty or disability and is composed of about 140 women who each commit $5,000 annually. To make the biggest impact possible, they select only a single nonprofit organization each year to receive a substantial gift that can make a serious difference in the lives of children in need.

"We saw and heard the Optimist kids and realized how much they deserve a new building with quality space in which to learn and receive therapy," said Palisades resident Jacqueline Caster, president of the foundation, which she founded in 1999. "The administration and staff's passion for these kids really struck us all and we couldn't help but fall in love with them and the agency."

Caster added that the Everychild grant will be "a minimum of $600,000, and hopefully more. We won't know the exact amount until we close out our books on December 31."

  Other major donors to the capital campaign, chaired by Palisadians Phil and Ona Wexler, included the Wexlers, the Ahmanson Foundation, the George Hoag Family Foundation, the Hugh and Hazel Darling Foundation, Henry L. Guenther Foundation, The Rose Hills Foundation, the S. Mark Taper Foundation, Union Bank of California, J.B. and Emily Van Nuys Charities, and the Weingart Foundation.

The facility, which is scheduled to open in early 2005, was designed by Ara Zenobians of Pasadena-based Flewelling & Moody Architects, which has been a leader in the design and planning of educational facilities since it was founded in 1928.

Founded in 1906, Optimist Youth Homes & Family Services annually cares for thousands of abused, troubled and neglected youth and juvenile offenders on probation from around California and is one of the largest such private centers in the region. It also operates seven group homes, a private high school, a foster care and adoption agency and multifaceted programs for community youth and parents.

Everychild Foundation "is always looking for more members," said Caster. "Our goal is to make an annual $1 million gift, so we need to have 200 members plus." Contact: 573-2153, or visit www.everychildfoundation.org.