The Stuart Foundation is a family foundation dedicated to improving life outcomes for young people through education.
For over three decades, we have contributed to the conditions in which youth can develop into successful and thriving adults. We do our work in California and Washington State.
Message from the President: Setting Our Sights on Thriving Adolescents
“…we are each other’s
harvest:
we are each other’s
business:
we are each other’s
magnitude and bond.”
– from Paul Robeson, by Gwendolyn Brooks
Imagine how different the lives of young people would be if we took Gwendolyn Brooks’ words to heart. If we thought of adolescents as our harvest. If we wrapped them in love and safety and belonging. If we made their thriving a priority.
Brooks, the first African American to win a Pulitzer Prize, grew up on Chicago’s South Side. She began writing poetry as a young girl and published her first poem in 1930 when she was 13. For Brooks, as for so many young people today – and for many of us at the Stuart Foundation – poetry was a tool to bear witness, to challenge, to offer hope and inspiration.
Nearly a century later, young creatives (poets, storytellers, and artists of all types) from across the state are challenging us to imagine a different present and future. One rooted in their well-being. In belonging. Their vision and their poetry took center stage earlier this month at Cultivating Possibilities, a White House Youth Policy Summit, where young people were in conversation with Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona, Secretary of the Department of Health & Human Services Xavier Becerra, Acting Secretary of Labor Julie Su, and dozens of researchers, advocates, and philanthropists – all intent on understanding how to create the conditions for young people to thrive.
California was well represented at the event, both by youth from throughout the state and by several organizations based or working in the Golden State, including Foundation partners YR Media, the UCLA Center for the Developing Adolescent, the California Community Schools Learning Exchange, and Jobs for the Future. I also had the privilege of talking with two young people, Perla and Iziaih, who lead the Young Adult Steering Council of the Hollywood Homeless Youth Partnership, a grantee of the Dwight Stuart Youth Fund, our sister Foundation in Los Angeles. They shared how their expertise and lived experiences are shaping local and state policies and how the work on the ground is more likely to be healing and human-centered when it’s truly shaped for and by young people. (more…)
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Our Purpose
Improving life outcomes for young people through education.
Our Values
Act with Integrity and Respect • Make an Impact • Pursue Diversity, Equity and Inclusion • Be Bold and Persevere • Pursue Excellence • Be Accountable
Our Vision
We believe all young people can succeed in school and in life if they have opportunity and support. To make this aspiration real, we must navigate away from narrow definitions of achievement toward an approach that supports a well-rounded education for all, and especially adolescents who are furthest from opportunity. This kind of learning is found within schools and systems that are intentionally designed to deliver it and where students are seen and valued, and have the agency and support needed to succeed.
Our Desired Future
We envision schools and school systems with both the people and the means to break stubborn historical links between race, class, academic achievement and opportunity. These schools accomplish the most important work there is: helping every young person thrive, regardless of neighborhood or circumstance.
Dwight Stuart Youth Fund
Endowed and launched by Dwight Stuart, Sr. in 2001, the mission of the Dwight Stuart Youth Fund (DSYF) is to support organizations in Los Angeles County that provide direct services and experiences to underserved children and youth so they may gain values, skills, and confidence to achieve their potential. In 2010, DSYF became a component fund of the Stuart Foundation.
