In this episode of The Do Good Podcast, Marc and Shlomy talk to Jesse Hahnel about foster youth.

Jesse Hahnel is the Executive Director of the National Center for Youth Law, commonly referred to as NCYL, and he is the former Director of NCYL’s Foster Youth Education Initiative (FosterEd). A graduate of Harvard University and Stanford Law School, Jesse has been an attorney at NCYL for nearly nine years. Seven years ago he founded FosterEd, an innovative, award winning, system-reform initiative of NCYL that improves educational outcomes of foster children.

The National Center for Youth Law is a public interest law firm that has been in existence for over four decades.  Its mission is to improve the lives of children and youth living in poverty.  It is a system transformation organization which means that it works to improve and support the systems that should be serving vulnerable youth.  

Foster youth in the US have worse outcomes than other at-risk youth: 

• There are about 415,000 foster youth in the US;
• There are about 28,000 foster youth in Los Angeles County;
• Only 58% of foster youth graduate from high school, and only 3% graduate from college;
• Fifty percent of the youth that age out of foster care end up either homeless or incarcerated.

Listen to Jesse discuss with us the work that he and the National Center for Youth Law are doing to help foster youth.  Click here for full show notes. 

Do Good!