More than 300 business leaders, elected officials and community members attended Uplift Family Service’s Silicon Valley Community Awards Luncheon on April 27, 2018 at the Fourth Street Summit Center in San Jose.
Together, they recognized Supervisor Ken Yeager and The Law Foundation of Silicon Valley’s Legal Advocates for Children & Youth (LACY) for their leadership and advocacy on behalf of children and families, and raised more than $630,000 for the organization’s Foster Care and Adoption Services.
In California, there are over 62,000 children in foster care, 1,357 of which live in Santa Clara County. The funds from the luncheon will go toward a massive foster care redesign, whose main focus is to create innovative new models that will get children and adolescents into permanent, home-like settings as quickly as possible.
The keynote speaker, founder and CEO of Think Of Us Sixto Cancel, further expanded upon this need for change and innovation. Looking to utilize technology, he is leading the creation of a mobile application that helps youth better navigate the foster care system, and prepares them to live independently after they turn 18. He said, “We had to think differently; there is too much mediocrity”.
The emcee was NBC traffic anchor Mike Inouye.
View photos from the 2018 Silicon Valley Community Awards Luncheon.
