H100 Answers Wishes of Hillsides Teens
Farm-Fresh Party Brings Harvest for Hillsides
Polytechnic Football Scores Big With Hillsides
Poly Head of School John Bracker said football coach Chris Schmoke, pictured above talking to senior John Genske, is a good mentor to all of his athletes and students.
Hillsides has partnerships with various schools in the Pasadena area, most notably Polytechnic. The union between the foster care organization and Poly began nearly 40 years ago and remains strong to this day.
Hillsides Tutor Coordinator Ian Lee praised Poly students for taking the time to tutor their clients, but working with an agency “dedicated to healing children and young adults, strengthening families and transforming communities through quality comprehensive services and advocacy,” he felt more could be done.
“I’m pretty sure I was the first one brave enough to ask, ‘Would you be open to hosting athletic clinics?’” Lee said. “We never really made a strong connection with an athletic student body group.”
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Former Hillsides Youth Receives Thursday Club Scholarship
The La Cañada Thursday Club recently awarded a $1,000 scholarship to a local youth, Hope Morrison. Morrison is a former resident of Youth Moving On, a program of Hillsides, a Southern California foster care charity. Morrison was selected from eight finalists who have received or currently are receiving services from YMO. She was awarded the check at a tea held at the La Cañada Thursday Club. This is the second year in a row the club has awarded a current or former YMO youth a scholarship.
Morrison, a student at Pasadena City College, is on track to graduate next fall with an associates degree in communications. She hopes to transfer to a UC school, with the ultimate goal of becoming a sports reporter. She also would like to one day open a nonprofit to help youth in foster care.
Currently she works part time as a job coach/mentor at the Alliance for Children’s Rights in Los Angeles and interns with the Los Angeles Transition Age Youth Collaborative. She also worked for three years as a full-time law clerk at Children’s Law Center in Monterey Park.
Hillsides’ Youth Moving On (youthmovingon.org) program offers a continuum of support services for transition-age youth 16-25 that includes housing services, a Peer Resource drop-in center and workforce development.
The La Cañada Thursday Club is a social, cultural and philanthropic organization that was founded in 1912 to reach out to the community to assist charitable, nonprofit groups and to further youth in their education.
Hillsides Receives $5 Million Grant
The Margie & Robert E. Petersen Foundation has awarded a $5 million grant to Hillsides for at-risk teens and young adults. It is the largest grant ever received in the foster care charity’s 104-year history.
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