Sutter Delta Medical Center is celebrating our new coffee vendor, Roots Java! Now, with every coffee sold in the Cafe, 10% of the proceeds from every delicious cup of coffee purchased will go to Fostering Promise’s Coffee for a Cause. The goal: A future in which no young person leaves foster care without a home.

The organization’s collaboration with Sutter Delta started more than six months ago when recently retired SDMC CEO Sherie Hickman saw Andre’ V. Chapman, Fostering Promise’s president and CEO, speaking at an event. Hickman found the organization’s purpose inspiring and tapped the hospital’s longtime Assistant Administrator Tim Bouslog, who began working with Chapman and Coach Fitz Hill, part of the Roots Java team coordinating Coffee for a Cause.

“As everybody knows, homelessness is a real crisis in the state of California. Fostering Promise’s mission really resonated with me and hit my heart. It made me wonder—what if I had grown up in the foster system and had nowhere to go?” Bouslog said. “I can only imagine what these kids go through. I told Fitz and Andre’, what better way to start this at Sutter Delta in hopes that it will spread throughout our system. What a great venture helping foster care kids in our community.”

The data are stark, according to Chapman. Up to 75 percent of the homeless population in the San Francisco Bay Area was in the juvenile system or foster care at some point before becoming homeless. Moreover, many young adults “age out” of foster care at 18 or 20 with nowhere to go and no resources to support them.

“If we can help one person, it’s a good mission,” Bouslog said. “Our partnership with Fostering Promise is going to be great for foster kids, and when you get to know the organization, it becomes a passion.

“I’m all in. I’m excited. If we can help one young kid, that’s a win—and we’ll help many. I’m glad to be a part of it.”

While the goal is to keep kids from becoming homeless after foster care, Hill pointed out another impact of having no support system in place for these young adults: “I was really surprised how many kids start looking at prison as a place of refuge. As Hill says, we’re paying for it one way or another. What the data says is that 70 percent to 85 percent of juvenile delinquents, when there’s no intervention, will spend an average of 12 years in the prison system.”

Think of it this way, Hill said: “There’s no better cup of coffee to drink than one that changes lives.”

For Chapman, it’s about starting with a proactive, rather than a reactive, approach to make a real difference, but he doesn’t sugarcoat the challenge, stating, “It’s nearly impossible to live in the Bay Area without family support. It’s nearly impossible to leave foster care and have a place to live here in the Bay Area with the high cost of housing.” Despite the challenges, he remains steadfast. “This is a solvable issue, and the numbers add up. We’re trying to hit touchdowns here, and we can win this.”

The program is now live at Sutter Delta! To learn more about Fostering Promise, click here. The organization released its policy priorities at a December 8 event hosted at Netflix highlighting the firsthand accounts from young adults with lived experiences whose lives were changed by positive interventions as they left the foster care system.

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Thank you to Sharon Villareal, DPT, from Rehabilitation Services for showing off a cup of the new java!