Our Mission
BEST Kids empowers youth who are in foster care and at-risk to build healthy and successful futures through mentoring, college and career readiness and life skills programs.
BEST Kids is guided by the belief that all children are talented. Through one-on-one volunteer mentoring, extensive training, staff support and experiential learning-based Peer Groups, we encourage our youth to discover and develop their unique skills and abilities. Beginning with children as young as six and continuing, as needed, until adulthood, BEST Kids works to enable youth to develop a positive sense of self, to acquire teamwork and group social skills, and to become productive members of society.
Our Vision
We aim to ensure that every young person in foster care is meaningfully connected to positive adults and feels confident and valued. We guide our youth in developing the skills needed to achieve success as adults, while also addressing systemic challenges that perpetuate the need for foster care in our community.
Our Values
Our Values are the core pillars within our belief system. It is through these principles that we work to bring about both our short term mission and longer-range vision.
Evolution in Action
In our recently completed strategic planning process we've gathered data and reimagined the way we do business. Our team successfully came up with new organizational statements that we feel better support the work we do with youth in foster care. In a time when so much around us is changing, Evolution in Action describes our ambition to evolve through strategic actions to better meet the needs of youth and their families through ongoing mentoring support. We look forward to transforming these ambitions into actions in our strategic priority areas of Engagement, Equity, and Excellence over the course of the next 5 years.
2021-2025 Strategic Plan
Our History
BEST Kids, Inc. is a 501(c)3 non-profit organization that provides mentoring to foster care children in the District of Columbia’s Child Welfare System. One of the strongest single protective factors a child can have is a close relationship with a caring adult who serves as a mentor and role model. Despite this, long term, consistent, one-on-one mentoring is almost non-existent for foster care children. We were the first pilot program in the District of Columbia to provide volunteer mentors dedicated to mentoring children in foster care. Operating under the first ever Volunteer Mentor Partnership Grant with the District of Columbia’s Child and Family Services Agency, BEST Kids mentoring program has been able to provide volunteer mentors for children as young as six and continue, as needed, until they reach the age of twenty-one years old. BEST Kids started with mentoring 10 youth in 2005 and has grown to provide mentoring to over 150 youth each year with the help of many donors, partners, supporters, and volunteers.
BEST Kids was incorporated in 2001 by Todd Leibbrand, who served as a Volunteer Advocate and a Court-Appointed Special Advocate (CASA) for over ten years to two boys in foster care in the District of Columbia. Todd saw the tremendous need for a positive adult role model in the boys’ lives and wanted to help other boys and girls in the same way. His first steps were to garner the input and support of many key experts and donors, many of whom are still involved in the organization today.
BEST Kids was incorporated in 2001 by Todd Leibbrand, who served as a Volunteer Advocate and a Court-Appointed Special Advocate (CASA) for over ten years to two boys in foster care in the District of Columbia. Todd saw the tremendous need for a positive adult role model in the boys’ lives and wanted to help other boys and girls in the same way. His first steps were to garner the input and support of many key experts and donors, many of whom are still involved in the organization today.
