SOY believes it is important to be a vital part of the community in which we serve, both by providing our youth opportunities to get involved and by collaborating with other city and nonprofit organizations.

SOY provides Community Service opportunities for its students to get involved in the community and serve others in need. Many of these are day-long projects in the local area, including:

• Back Bay Clean-up in Newport Beach
• SOS Adopt a Family Project in Costa Mesa
• Label Bottles to Prevent Teenage Drinking in Local Area

“As the first Adult Day Program and Counseling Center in Los Angeles, OPICA (Optimistic People In a Caring Atmosphere) has been serving adults challenged with memory loss and their families in the West Los Angeles area for more than 41 years. Thanks to the visionary leadership of Professor Yung-huo Liu of UCLA and philanthropists Ted and Rita Williams, OPICA became the first social model adult day care center in the City of Los Angeles and later served as the model for the City of Los Angeles’ network for future adult day care centers. Clearly meeting a community need, OPICA’s client base grew rapidly. In 1984, with help of then-Los Angeles Mayor Tom Bradley, a recreation facility in Stoner Park was transformed into OPICA’s current quarters. In 1998-99, a dedicated counseling wing was constructed with private funding, including a generous grant from the Parsons Foundation, to better meet the needs of family caregivers of older adults with memory loss.

In 2006, Mary Michlovich joined OPICA as its Executive Director. She brought with her more than a decade’s worth of experience in working with seniors as well as a passion and vision for a center that consistently provides professional and compassionate staff, a supportive environment and innovative programming to meet evolving community needs. Under her leadership, OPICA has developed and expanded early-stage memory loss and fall prevention programs, a research function to ensure best practices and extensive collaborative networks with community partners.

Today, OPICA provides comprehensive programming specifically focused on all stages of memory loss in a nurturing environment. Offerings include cognitive stimulation activities, such as therapeutic art and music, brain fitness, counseling, education, and The OPICA Brain Train early memory loss program. Through on-site and select satellite programs, OPICA fills a critical need as one of the leading not-for-profit community-based organizations focused solely on memory loss.

Celebrating 40 years serving the Alzheimer’s community, OPICA looks to the future with great optimism and excitement. We are in an era where we have more access to age-related information than ever before. We better understand the progression of memory loss, preventative measures and how to best care for ourselves and our families through the journey of dementia.

By 2050, the number of people age 65 and older with Alzheimer’s disease may nearly triple, from 5 million to as many as 16 million, barring the development of medical breakthroughs to prevent, slow or stop the disease. OPICA’s mandate to help individuals and families suffering from dementia is more important now than ever, underscoring the need to continue and expand our efforts.

Members of OPICA have lived rich and full lives with amazing stories to tell, and we have the privilege to add to their stories. The looks of joy, wonder, learning and creativity on members’ faces remind us every day that we have so much to offer and learn from one another.”

Click here to learn more about other 2020 recipients.

Watch the story behind the L.O.V.E. Foundation and why it serves homeless & disenfranchised youth in Hollywood & L.A.

Click here to learn more about other 2020 recipients.

Leo Buscaglia Foundation supported the third year of their Lil Innovators Early Childhood STEM Project.  This three pronged project provides 1.) science, technology, math and engineering (STEM) learning opportunities for preschoolers in three preschools in La Habra serving low-income families 2.) professional development workshops for early childhood education teachers to teach STEM concepts effectively to future preschoolers 3.) opportunities for parent engagement – to help them support the ongoing achievement of their students into the future.  The mission of the Children’s Museum at La Habra is to encourage enthusiasm about learning that opens the world to even the youngest child, thereby increasing the chances of academic success.  The Friends of the Children’s Museum at La Habra supports this mission through fundraising efforts on behalf of the museum.  The Friends of the Children’s Museum at La Habra received a $1,500 grant from the Leo Buscaglia Foundation in February of 2018. 

“My favorite part about today, I think, was just the feeling of being able to be relaxed and to be able to talk about things that a lot of women veterans go through, but don’t necessarily speak about in public.”

Share in the joy of these women veterans as they relax with some beauty and papering at this pop-up salon in conjunction with Blushington and Brentwood School!

Click here to learn more about other 2020 recipients.

“Over the past year, arts and education institutions have had to adapt to a new reality in which arts students, practitioners, and audience members could not be together in the same room. While this has had the effect of de-centering many of the institutional strategies for engagement that organizations spent decades building, it also created opportunities to rethink how we engage and interact with our community. In this blog, I bring to light the challenges American Youth Symphony’s music education program, Share-A-Stand (SAS) faced in the past year, and how the administrative team and I adapted to the circumstances in order to improve our program and meet students in the digital sphere.”

American Youth Symphony like everyone else has had to learn to adapt to digital learning. Read the full article how they continued teaching and students continued learning!

Click here to read the full article.

Tutoring has started at SOY! Junior high and high school students are welcome! Register online and join us!