Heritage Awards

To honor the YouthBridge heritage as a former children’s home, the YouthBridge Community Foundation Heritage Fund provides multi-year unrestricted grants to child and family serving nonprofit organizations that primarily provide foster and adoptive care services or family support services designed to prevent or treat child abuse and neglect. Two Heritage Fund grants were recently awarded to St. Louis organizations.
The Child Center, Inc.
The Child Center, Inc., is a nationally accredited Child Advocacy Center that provides services to child victims of abuse and their non-offending caregivers in fourteen Missouri counties. They also provide prevention education programs to children, Mandated Reporters, and parents to help break the cycle of abuse. Support from the Heritage Fund will allow them to conduct strategic planning sessions to determine the appropriate growth path for their organization and help ensure the sustainability of future programs.


Oone HeartOne Heart Family Ministries recruits, assists in training, and supports Christian families for children in Missouri State foster care. One Heart seeks to give children in state care a home that will provide healing and hope for the future, while helping foster parents to nurture these hurting children. The grant from the YouthBridge Community Foundation Heritage Fund will allow One Heart Family Ministries to design and implement a long range plan to ensure the current support programs and direction of future support programs align with the needs of the families they serve. Emily Nienhuis, Director of One Heart, says, “We are very grateful for this grant from YouthBridge that will allow us to continue to serve children and families in our community impacted by foster care. Our One Heart families have a very difficult job caring for kids coming from traumatic situations. We want to do our very best to serve them and support them while they care for these precious children. This grant will help us ensure our future programs also support our families in the ways they need it as their families grow.”