Empowered Not Homeless

Each year over 25,000 youth will age out of foster care with little support, guidance or housing. Half will experience homelessness within 1 year. Nearly 75% will be unemployed by 24. Foster youth aging out of care face a very real fear of ending up on the streets, and once homeless this cycle is even harder to break. We believe our communities need to step in sooner and do more to ensure foster youth have the skill sets, experiences and resources that lead toward successful independence. To help Ticket to Dream is generating awareness, raising much needed funds and will be pouring both financial resources and best practice sharing into 4 key areas that statistically reduce homelessness, increase employment opportunities and decrease future incarceration, poverty and suicide rates. Simply we need to empower youth for success.

• Housing: Youth need a safe place to land while they learn the ropes and set up future plans.
• Education: Foster youth often need specialized support that overcomes multiple school placements, PTSD and other hurdles, while guiding them toward high school graduation, and college.
• Technology Access: More than 70% of foster youth do not have access to a computer yet today's classrooms, colleges, social services and employers require it. With more laptops in the hands of high school foster youth you will see an increase in school attendance, graduation, college enrollment, employment and a decrease in depression rates.
• Life/Job Skills Training: Youth need to learn how to make responsible choices very quickly and skills like job interviews, household budgets, cooking and more help them avoid pitfalls that can lead to disaster without a family to support you.