The spirit of giving is strong throughout our community, where countless individuals and groups consistently dedicate their time and effort to ensure that those in need have the resources, support and opportunities to thrive and succeed. The nonprofits highlighted here are among the inspiring local organizations that work year-round to care for our most vulnerable neighbors.
Boys & Girls Club of Burbank and Greater East Valley
The Boys & Girls Club of Burbank and Greater East Valley has been a cornerstone of support for youth in the community since its inception in 1995. From its humble beginnings in an old firehouse on Buena Vista, the nonprofit has grown to serve nearly 3,600 young people across 32 locations in five communities, including Burbank, North Hollywood, Hollywood, Van Nuys and Encino. This expansion has been driven by the dedication of community volunteers and the unwavering support of local stakeholders.
“When we first opened, we were a single location serving about 75 kids a day, and we had a budget of under $250,000,” says CEO Shanna Warren, who first joined the organization as a volunteer in 2001. “Seven years after we opened, the Club was asked to start a site on a school campus and was replicated the following year at six sites. Since 1995, we have positively changed the lives of thousands of children in Burbank and the greater East Valley area. The Club is dedicated to making an even greater impact as we continue into our third decade of service.”
Separating the Boys & Girls Club of Burbank and Greater East Valley from other recreation programs is its focus on being there for young people ages 5–18. “That is our target population, and we never turn a child away from any of our programs for an inability to pay,” Warren says. “Over half of our Club members receive some sort of financial aid to attend the club after school or during the summer, winter and spring breaks.”
The Club’s original mission was initially to “inspire and enable disadvantaged youth to realize their full potential,” but Warren explains how that’s evolved. “We removed the ‘disadvantaged’ part from our mission years ago, as all youth are disadvantaged in one way or another,” she explains. “Their parents may never be home because they’re working multiple jobs, or maybe their parents are incarcerated, resulting in them being raised by their grandparents. English may not be the child’s first language, or maybe their parents have a substance abuse problem. The list goes on and on, so we wanted to make sure our mission was to inspire and enable all young people.”
While the Club has expanded its reach over the years, its commitment to the youth has only grown stronger. “We aim to inspire and enable all young people to realize their full potential as productive, responsible and caring citizens,” Warren shares. “It is our vision to provide a world-class experience that assures success is within reach of every young person who walks through our doors, with all members on track to graduate from high school with a plan for the future, demonstrating good character and citizenship, and living a healthy lifestyle.”
The nonprofit also offers several unique age- and grade-appropriate youth development programs, including being the only Boys & Girls Club in the country to offer a deaf and hard-of-hearing program, which provides after-school enrichment through tutoring, homework assistance and recreational activities facilitated in sign language.
“We also offer homework assistance and tutoring, visual and performing arts, athletics and STEM programming, which includes chess and robotics,” Warren says. “In addition, we have a free teen program, which provides college and career readiness. Our goal is to not only ensure that youth will graduate from high school and be able to engage with academic content, but create opportunities for youth to fall in love with learning and connect their passions to a plan for the future.”
The Club has also adapted its services to meet the evolving needs of the community. During the pandemic, the nonprofit provided crucial support to families.
“Our Boys & Girls Club was the only child care organization in our community that stayed open full time during COVID — we never closed our doors,” Warren says. “The Club remained open 11 hours a day to ensure that children whose parents still had to go to work had a safe place to go, that they were fed, and that once online learning began, they had access to technology.”
Warren adds that the Club’s staff worked closely with schools and teachers during this uncertain time to ensure kids weren’t falling behind academically. “We are very proud of the fact we were able to do this,” she shares.
The Club is also highly aware of the diversity among its members — 72% identify as non-Caucasian — and takes pride in being a culturally sensitive and diverse organization.
“While cultural and linguistic needs may predominately be the concern of members whose first language at home is not English, the Club also addresses the diversity of its youth in two other very important aspects,” Warren shares. “Club staff are trained on LGBTQ inclusion, including vocabulary, sensitivity, responding to youth and supporting parents. Second, when working with deaf and hard-of-hearing youth and staff, the Club ensures an interpreter is present for special events. Staff is also trained on basic American Sign Language (ASL) and deaf culture.”
The Club’s board members and staff also reflect the rich diversity of the young people they serve. “Board members come from a variety of different occupations, education levels and ethnicities,” Warren explains. “Many staff members are also local community members who have been raised in the same schools as the youth they now serve, reflecting the community demographic. Many staff are bilingual in English/Spanish, English/ASL and English/Armenian.”
Part of the reason the Club’s team has such a strong connection with the young people they serve is the commonalities they share. “Our leadership team has experienced similar challenges that our families and youth face, including being young parents, coming from or being the head of a single-parent household, struggling to understand the value of — and how to get into and pay for — education after high school, and other barriers to success,” Warren says. “Additionally, our deaf and hard-of-hearing members are led by deaf rec specialists, most of whom are also deaf or hard of hearing.”
To support the Club and its mission, please visit bgcburbank.org/volunteer.
Volunteers of the Burbank Animal Shelter
This past June, the Volunteers of the Burbank Animal Shelter (VBAS) celebrated 30 years of providing medical, social, behavioral and financial care for at-risk animals and working to eliminate animal homelessness in the Burbank community. The nonprofit was founded in 1994 during a challenging time for the city-run shelter, which had very limited resources and wasn’t equipped to meet the needs of all the animals that came through its doors. Due to its inability to provide 24-hour and emergency care to keep them alive, many animals — especially injured ones and young kittens — were being euthanized each day. There were no programs available for animals with special needs, like newborn kittens, or those requiring major medical care and surgeries. Fortunately, a dedicated group of volunteers stepped in to change all that, and VBAS was born.
Over the years, the organization has grown from a cadre of just a few founding members to more than 100 active volunteers and over 200 foster parents, and has developed a variety of lifesaving programs to meet the evolving needs of the shelter and community. Many are aimed at preventing animals from being euthanized by freeing up crucial shelter space, including the Kitten Foster Program, which saves more than 300 kittens each year by placing them in loving homes until they’re ready for adoption. Similarly, the Adult Dog Foster Program provides dogs with a break from the chaotic shelter environment and gives those that have undergone major surgeries a quiet place to recover. And because not all cats are suited for indoor homes, VBAS created its Barn Cat Program to save the lives of unadoptable feral cats by placing them in safe working homes such as barns or stables, industrial facilities and residential yards throughout L.A. County and beyond — including the Burbank Home Depot.
Other initiatives are aimed at caring for and enriching the lives of shelter animals. For the past 15 years, volunteers with the organization’s Happy Tails Hike program have taken groups of shelter dogs hiking in the Burbank mountains to give them exercise and a chance to socialize with people on the trails — some of whom have even ended up adopting the dogs they meet. VBAS recently soft-launched a Day Hike program that allows volunteers to take dogs out for the day and help give them a break from the shelter environment.
In addition, VBAS has worked with the shelter’s medical team to fund all lifesaving medical procedures that need to be performed by outside specialists, including broken bone repair, difficult dental extractions, eye surgeries and countless other interventions without which the animals might have had to be euthanized. The organization also funds special medications, prescription diets, lab work, the shelter’s X-ray and blood analysis machines, and many other medical supplies the city cannot provide.
VBAS has faced several challenges over the past few years, including a dramatic drop in volunteers during the height of COVID, as well as increases in overall animal intakes due to the pandemic and economic difficulties plaguing local communities — a crisis faced by shelters across the country. Inflation has also posed obstacles, both by raising the cost of pet food and supplies and by reducing the disposable income donors have available to give to charitable causes. VBAS has responded by aggressively recruiting and rebuilding its volunteer base while finding innovative ways to fundraise. In 2020, it launched a fall fundraiser called Auction for Animals, an annual online three-day silent auction of items donated from local and national businesses. With more than 300 items up for bid, the 2024 event raised over $28,000 in three days. The Ruff-ly Drawn fundraiser, launched in 2023, invites community members to make a donation to VBAS and submit a photo of their pet; in return, they receive a custom artwork of their pet, typically from a local artist. This year, the campaign garnered more than 500 submissions and raised over $16,000. This money is vital to the organization’s ongoing efforts to find ways to improve and grow its programs, expand shelter services throughout the community and help fund capital improvements to the shelter facility.
Above all, the organization’s greatest asset is its devoted, talented pool of volunteers. “Burbank is a unique, passionate, creative community, with a wide variety of people from all walks of life,” board chair Matt Robertson says. “As a result, VBAS has been able to recruit volunteers over the years who are passionate about animal welfare and are creative in solving the unique challenges that come with saving lives at this scale. There is no problem too big or too small that we can’t help find a solution for by utilizing a variety of skill sets from our volunteers. They are the bedrock of our organization, and without them we would never be able to accomplish what we do today.”
In an urban area as vast as L.A., which has thousands of homeless animals and dozens of shelters, he notes that one of the key elements of VBAS’ success has been its ability to differentiate itself and attract attention to the Burbank shelter animals looking for forever homes. “We’ve developed volunteer teams, like our Photo Team, who take ‘glamour shots’ of our animals every week using professional photography equipment from the Shelter Art Foundation,” he explains. “In addition, we encourage all volunteers who work with our animals to share their insights on their personality and behavior to write engaging profiles and bios that help tell their stories.”
VBAS’ tireless volunteers spend thousands of hours each year helping animals in need, but it’s clearly a labor of love and the benefits go both ways. “I get to share our mission with new volunteers and help them find where they best fit in the organization — all while getting to care for and love puppies and kittens! What could be better?” asks volunteer services director Eleanor O’Brien. Finance/development chair Chris de Zorzi agrees: “Being able to work with so many dedicated volunteers, watching our programs grow over the years and seeing so many lives being saved is rewarding beyond words.” And Robertson adds, “Animals have unlimited love to share and it’s been gratifying to see so many get adopted to forever homes.”
As a 100% volunteer-run organization that receives no funding from the shelter or the city, VBAS is always looking for more people to give their time and talents, adopt or foster a pet, or donate funds or supplies to help save the lives of Burbank’s homeless animals.
To learn more and support VBAS, please visit thevbas.org.
She Ready Foundation
On any given day there are nearly 437,000 children in foster care in the U.S., and nearly 100 times a day a child in California is placed in the system, reports the Children’s Law Center of California. In L.A. County alone, there are more than 30,000 youth in the system, with hundreds waiting for an adoptive family.
These children are among the most vulnerable populations nationwide and face adverse conditions, including abuse, neglect and abandonment. Furthermore, they are often not given enough resources to succeed or overcome their situations, making it difficult to navigate growing up and the transition into adulthood. Recognizing this need, the She Ready Foundation has stepped up and stepped in to uplift foster youth with the support they need to thrive.
Actor, author and comedian Tiffany Haddish established the L.A.–based She Ready Foundation in 2019 to empower, support and encourage youth living in foster care. The inspiration behind its creation stemmed from her own difficult childhood and the experiences she had while growing up in the system.
At age 12, Haddish and her four siblings were put into foster care after their mother was unable to continue caring for them following a car accident that had left her with severe brain damage. Haddish was separated from her brothers and sisters and went on to live in three foster homes and two group homes before reuniting with them at age 15, when they were placed in their grandmother’s care.
When Haddish reflects on that period of her life, she recalls what it was like to move from place to place with all her belongings in garbage bags — she had felt like trash and as if the world had forgotten her. She never wanted foster kids to have that feeling, so she started giving out brand-new luggage to children from the trunk of her car and then at her standup shows. That effort became the basis for She Ready.
“I started small, giving out suitcases to kids that I knew because I wanted them to feel like I felt when I got a piece of luggage — like a traveler on a journey, not trash,” Haddish shares. “Then, as I started touring around the world, it expanded. Now, we give away thousands of pieces of luggage, provide tutoring and scholarships, and have a paid summer internship program in the entertainment industry. The young people are already great, and they will do even more. Every child who is removed from their parents deserves to have a suitcase, a safe place to lay their head and a platform to follow their dreams.”
She Ready helps those dreams become a reality through its Life Leadership Academy Access and Elevate programs. Access provides young adults with essential life and career skills, covering mindfulness, health, financial literacy and job training, while Elevate builds on that foundation with advanced courses and a deeper focus on professional development, preparing participants for successful and productive futures.
Additionally, the paid summer internship program offers real-world skills and insights into the entertainment industry. It was created to give foster youth a chance at obtaining these positions, which are coveted by many young people who have the means, connections and preparation to secure them. Each year, the program accepts up to 20 transition-aged foster youth (ages 18 to 24) who get the opportunity to learn from industry experts and create their own media content.
“We know all of our young people walk away with true life skills to prepare them for adulthood,” development director Leeron Tal says. “We stay connected in their lives and support them throughout their journey. Once you join one of our programs, you’re part of the She Ready family!”
The foundation also hosts and participates in events throughout the year to raise awareness and funds for foster youth, working closely with the L.A. County Department of Children and Family Services and organizational programs for transition-aged youth such as resource fairs and graduations. Haddish also highlights She Ready at her comedy shows and book readings, selling merchandise and hosting meet-and-greets with all proceeds going to foster youth. And the foundation hosts its prom-themed annual fundraising gala during National Foster Care Awareness Month in May.
On top of that, She Ready serves as a voice for foster youth on the local, state and national levels, partnering with like-minded organizations such as See Us Now and Think of Us to advocate for legislation that aims to improve the system by providing more resources to restore dignity to youth facing adversity and addressing housing, food scarcity, education and workforce issues that plague transition-aged youth.
Through these programs and initiatives, She Ready has helped thousands of foster youth. Partnerships with luggage providers have allowed them to give away more than 1,200 pieces of luggage annually since 2021. And through a collaboration with CASA of L.A. and the Oprah Winfrey Charitable Foundation, they have been able to give over 250 young people Kindles and access to books. Independently, the foundation has distributed more than 1,500 books to children and has hosted book readings by Haddish at libraries across the country.
Tal notes that this type of work is both rewarding and necessary, but it comes with its own set of obstacles. “One of the biggest challenges is being able to adequately provide the resources needed to accomplish the work we do,” she explains. “Without a luggage provider, we have to ask for donations to purchase the luggage needed, and giving away luggage can be costly because of the shipping and manpower required to move it around.” Additionally, it takes a lot of time and resources to run the internship program.
Despite these barriers, “the results are phenomenal when we see the outcomes — our youth are absolutely the most resilient and talented people in the world,” Tal says. “We would love to have a sponsor for either of these programs to lessen the financial cost and, of course, volunteers to make the work for our small but mighty crew a bit lighter.”
She Ready is looking forward to building on its mission and providing even more support to foster youth in the coming years, with plans to help get a federal law passed that ensures every child entering the system receives luggage; expand its internship program to become a fellowship that includes housing, food, field trips and more; and connect with even more advocates and organizations protecting and inspiring foster youth.
Tal says the foundation is always interested in volunteers — or “She Ready Soldiers” — who want to provide their time and expertise or make a donation to help She Ready’s goals across the finish line and “assure every child is greeted in this world with dignity and hope.”
To learn more about the She Ready Foundation, please visit shereadyfoundation.org.
