Family & Youth Initiative

Family & Youth Initiative (DCFYI) creates enriching lifetime relationships for youth at risk of aging out of foster care. We make a difference in the lives of older children by forging pathways to adoption while building bridges between youth and a community of adults willing to open their hearts and homes.

DCFYI runs community-based programming to help teens in foster care meet and develop lasting relationships with caring adults.

Family & Youth Initiative fulfills its mission using an innovative approach that brings together adults and teens through regular program events to form a caring community and to get to know each other. Relationships that start at these events lead to adult-teen matches for mentoring, host parenting, and adoption.

Family & Youth Initiative recruits adult volunteers. We train, support, and match mentors and host parents. Through advocacy, we help teens find adoptive parents.

We support youth as they explore and start post-­secondary education. We help them develop the social and emotional skills and self-confidence to lead productive, self­-sufficient adult lives.