Hawks hovered over Hap Magee Ranch Park on Sunday afternoon as blurs of orange-shirted kids frolicked below at the Today’s Youth Matter Second Annual HOPEFEST.

Today’s Youth Matter is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization based in Milpitas, that was established in 1990 to serve at-risk children in the Bay Area and Sacramento regions. 

HOPEFEST is an annual celebration and a community outreach event, according to founder Marilyn Siden.

At this year’s HOPEFEST, kids chose from several carnival games and group sport activities. They got creative at craft stations and competed in a team scavenger hunt as well as received balloon creations from Scooter the Clown.

They also met retired National Football League guard, Larry Allen. Volunteers from San Ramon Valley Christian Academy and Christ Community Church of Milpitas lended a hand at the event.

Siden says she decided to start the program when she moved to the Bay Area. She modeled it on a similar program she was a part of in Oregon, in order to offer kids in the foster care system “reason for hope and a future.” 

Siden has served as the director since the beginning and says she has no plans of ever retiring.

The Christian-based program offers free “intensive” summer camps and winter camps, where volunteer youth leaders build and nurture relationships with campers. They also teach transferrable skills that instill physical and emotional confidence in the kids, who are often living in difficult circumstances.

Siden sees her mission as "filling the gap" for disadvantaged children.

“The kids don’t need the preachy stuff,” says Siden. “They need people to walk alongside them.”

Back in the Bay Area, mentors continue to follow up, providing tutoring as needed as well as supporting and listening to the kids.

The connections formed are strong, according to parents whose children participate in the program.

Patricia Goates has three children, two of whom she adopted. She contacted the group last year because it offered summer camp programs that she normally couldn’t afford as well as volunteers who are “nurturing and accepting” of kids from the foster care system.

“They take time to be with them and get to know them,” says Goates. Her kids have become attached to the volunteers, she says.

“It makes me happy to see my kids have positive relationships with adults,” Goates says. “That doesn’t always happen in foster care.”

Volunteer mentors and supporters are a key part of the organization.

On Sunday, Mark Westgate and Brad Peterson of Danville brought their daughters and their fellow Mustang Soccer “Mustang Lightning” squad members to the event to make a donation to the organization.

Moved by what they learned about the program and its work one week before HOPEFEST, the girls mobilized to support it in a project Westgate says they call “Play it Forward.”

The girls, all under 12 years of age, organized bake sales, lemonade stands and a juggle-a-thon. They raised more than $400. 

Tucker Farrar, who originally joined the organization as a volunteer 11 years ago, says time and support given by community members are key to their work. Often the connections the at-risk kids make with volunteers and staff is their “lifeblood.”

The kids are always eager to take part in the several special events the organization arranges, such as San Francisco Giants baseball games. However, Farrar says they really are most interested in “just hanging out” with people who show they care about them.

The connection is a daily one, and he says that kids call their offices “just to say hi,” or to check in and tell them that they arrived home from school.

Farrar especially looks forward to taking the kids to the mountains each year. He says the trips take them out of their normal environments and lets them experience something they never have before.

“There is way to love on the kids that is unique to the mountains,” says Farrar. The kids gain a certain kind of physical and emotional strength from knowing they can hike six miles in the forest, he says.

While Sunday’s gathering celebrated how far they have come over the past year, Farrar says HOPEFEST is forward-looking as well — the hope that more people will be moved to make connections that make all the difference in the life of a child.

To learn more about Today’s Youth Matter, visit their website.