Ep. 6 - Jesse Hahnel: Foster Youth

11/14/17 • 58 min

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!

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

Previous Episode

Ep. 5 - Leila Toplic: Refugees

In this episode of The Do Good Podcast, Shlomy and Marc speak with Leila Toplic.

Leila is Global Program Leader at NetHope, a tech consortium of 50 global NGOs, where she heads the No Lost Generation Tech Task Force, an initiative aimed at using technology to support the needs of refugee children and youth. A refugee herself, Leila’s passion for social causes has manifested itself in a number of ways since Leila and her family fled Bosnia in the mid-90s. This included teaching English and art at the Bosnian Refugee School in the Nagyatad Refugee Camp. Prior to NetHope Leila served as the Chief Marketing and Business Development Officer at LRNG, a social enterprise that works collaboratively with schools, businesses, cities, and community institutions to redesign learning for the 21st century so all youth have the opportunity to succeed. Leila has also worked at Sama Group as the VP of Marketing and Partnerships, and before that spent over 13 years helping lead global marketing at Microsoft and Adobe.

Leila speaks to us about the work being undertaken to assist refugees. We talk about how the private sector, non-profits, and non-governmental organizations are working together to find innovative solutions to the refugee issue. And, we talk about Leila's own experience as a refugee.

If you would like to learn about the refugee crisis and what is being done to fight it, Leila gives a fantastic overview and includes many fascinating personal insights. Check out our full show notes here.