About Us

Building Dreams and Self-Esteem

The Brightest Star, Inc. was founded in 2008. After serving as an outreach program on the campus of the legendary orphanage, McKinley Home for Boys, aka McKinley Children's Center, for three years (2005-2007) our nonprofit organization became an awarding winning charitable 501 (c) 3 organization focusing on building dreams and self-esteem in at-risk youth. We use Social Emotional Learning (SEL) and Character Building as a platform foundation to prevent and reduce self-destructive and risky behaviors (depression-shame, guilt, grief, drug abuse, alcoholic abuse, risk of suicide, low academic performance, high school dropout, bullying, violence, sexual acting out, delinquency and anti-social behaviors) in an educational setting and environment.

We encourage, inspire, empower and motivate mental health wellness, youth leadership development, educational success,

life skills and most importantly social responsibility and accountability.

We are comprised of dedicated volunteers. Although it is our collective vision to improve the mental health wellness and educational success of children and teens thriving in the Foster Care system, we also serve, homeless and probation at-risk youth populations. But our focus is Foster Youth. Hence, we operate through a wide variety of SEL techniques and character-building activities to cover different therapeutic formats to promote healing, self-confident, self-worth, academic success, and dream building.

This endeavor is very challenging. Therefore, our culminating experience can take multiple forms and dimensions such as providing a special field trip or celebrity visit for a single struggling minor or for a larger group of youth in need of inspiration and motivation to enhance important life skills associated with goal setting and believing in the possibilities of being successful and productive citizens in their family and community.

It begins with an action plan one youth at a time. To heal broken hearts, or troubled minds to believe in their attainable success and their greatness within despite the difficult circumstances that make so many of our challenging youth rebel, not succeed or become productive individuals in our communities it begins with action plans.

There are three mainstay anchors taught collectively in our programs and services provided. These mainstays operate throughout our workshops, and activities encouraging our youth participants to cooperate, and collaborate, as we are someone unique in our operational approach. A "whatever it takes attitude" within each anchor, helping our organization to think out of the box to reach hearts to make an impact on changing young lives.

The three anchors are CHARACTER BUILDING, SKILL BUILDING, and DREAM BUILDING. Within each anchor are hundreds of lessons, tools and activities that meet our youth's often times very challenging complex needs and behaviors towards discovering how beautiful they are, or their personal God-given greatness within.