Correction appended.
Bruins will join more than 1,000 foster children attending a day of fun, frolic, and games at the annual “Day of the Child” event on Santa Monica Pier on Nov. 9.
Organized by Children Uniting Nations, a nonprofit organization started 10 years ago by philanthropist Daphna Ziman, and joined this year by the UCLA Anderson School of Management, the event will allow participants to become mentors for a day.
Correction: A previous version of this article incorrectly identified Daphna Ziman as a UCLA alumna. She has never attended UCLA.
Foster children in Los Angeles, many of whom have been abused, will receive school supplies, candy and companionship at the event.
“The objective is to take these children and provide them with a series of inspirational role models,” said Judy Olian, the Anderson dean. She said Anderson has also recruited the School of Public Policy and the School of Law to join the effort.
Ziman said the experience has led to a large percentage of participants who become full-time mentors, teaching for a minimum of four hours a week.
“It’s very important for us to start acting as a family and start bringing these children into our family,” she said, stressing the importance of community activism in foster children’s lives.
Ziman said that aside from the partnership with Anderson, which began in summer, her group partnered with UCLA research facilities to understand the effects of post-traumatic stress syndrome on children’s cognitive abilities.
“We are now partnering with UCLA on several levels. UCLA has offered to look at the analysis and findings that we have found and create a work that they can publish ““ which includes the impact of trauma on cognitive ability,” Ziman said. She said research showed that post-traumatic stress could prevent children from learning, leading to children dropping out of school and causing trouble.
“Statistics show that only 25 percent of students entering the first grade graduate from high school. … That’s like a third world country,” Ziman said.
She added that peer counselors are crucial to the program since they connect and engage with foster children and break down barriers to their success.
Jackie Hernandez, a student at Santa Monica City College, said the children she has met taught her about her own life.
“You go in here thinking how you want to change someone’s life … but you end up learning so much from them,” she said.
She added that she marvels at their strength, saying that she was personally touched by a young boy’s written account of seeing his father sent to prison.
“Many of these kids have had such hard lives … but they come in here really wanting to learn. It’s amazing how some of them are so positive,” she said.
Celebrities joined the cause, including Christina Milian, Pierce Brosnan and Sen. Hillary Clinton.
Ziman added that all kinds of mentors are needed: from academic mentors who teach children to read, to lifestyle mentors who take the children out and about to experience a life they have only seen from the sidelines.
“Many of these children have never seen a supermarket before, or the inside of a bank,” Ziman said.
She stressed that it meant the most to children to form bonds with people who were not paid to see them.