Empowering Foster Youth Through Creative Tools

Support for foster and systems-impacted youth

South Bay County of Los Angeles (select only if your project has a countywide benefit)

Expand existing project, program, or initiative (expanding and continuing ongoing, successful work)

The youth mental health crisis is an urgent issue for all students - especially foster and underserved youth. Many face addiction, anxiety, and disconnection—often without access to stigma-free, culturally relevant support. Traditional clinical models can sometimes feel inaccessible or impersonal for these youth, so we spent 5 years co-creating a new program from their ideas. CWT alum Spencer shares, “I grew up 14 years of my life in an abusive household. At age 14… I tried to take my own life. Indivisible Arts taught me 7 Creative Wisdom Tools and I use those tools every single day. Because of IA, I was able to graduate high school - (they) changed my life and my perspective.” Through successes with students like Spencer, we recognize that creativity and emotional intelligence are indispensable tools for healing. When we equip youth with life-long tools like self-awareness, and we empower their creative expression, they become agents of change in their lives & communities.

This grant will support the expansion of our Creative Wisdom Tools (CWT) program, an arts-based, youth-led mental wellness initiative co-created with foster youth in Los Angeles. Delivered in partnership with RFC and Da Vinci RISE High, CWT is currently taught as a California state-accepted high school English and Art curriculum. The program combines mindfulness, emotional intelligence, and creative expression to help transitional-aged youth reduce anxiety and substance use, process trauma, and build resilience. Youth meet weekly in safe, peer-supported environments to learn practical tools like self-awareness, radical acceptance, emotional regulation, and communication. The program culminates in training graduates—many with lived foster care experience—to become employees, deepening the impact and continuity of the program. These trusted mentors help break stigma, foster connection, and empower youth to reclaim their voice and purpose. This approach cultivates youth leaders who model healing and growth for others, while training them in creative development by collaborating with them to develop the ECBC online platform. This proposal ensures the continuity of the program with existing students for the next school year, while making it accessible to all youth through a platform (ECBC) where youth can learn these tools, and teach them to others through user generated videos where students share their experience, strength, and hope to others going through similar experiences.

Through the Emerging Consciousness Broadcast Center - we’re empowering the voice of the next generation of mindfulness and mental health. The seven tools—Awareness, Acceptance, Intention, Gratitude, Compassion, Forgiveness, Connection—will be freely available to any suffering youth, beyond borders or barriers. Da Vinci RISE principal Naomi Lara shares, “Our teens are awakening with impactful and inspired results. These students deserve effective tools to deal with life - and this program delivers tools that they can use TODAY.” LA County’s 30,000 youth in the foster care system—the most in the U.S.—deserve access to trauma-informed, healing-centered care. Through CWT, youth gain resilience-building, stigma-breaking guidance in school-based, peer-led environments. Together, with RFC and Da Vinci RISE, we’re building a replicable arts-wellness-leadership model—while expanding ECBC’s youth-created content. Our vision: a countywide network by 2027, and 1 Million Conscious Youth by 2030.