1. Toussaint Center for Teens without Homes Evolves into Academy of the Arts and Sciences
   By Martha Lepore
2. Looking at “A Children’s Village”
   By Bill Bolstad - Toussaint Youth Villages
3. Teens Compete During Trial Run at Being on Their Own
   By Jodi Cilley
4. A ‘Light’ for ALL
   By Michael Wall - Director of Planned Giving

Looking at “A Children’s Village”
By Bill Bolstad - Toussaint Youth Villages

Can you see it? 

A neighborhood baseball game ensues amid acres of rolling grassland as horses and cattle watch lazily on from the shade of a nearby grove of oak trees. 

Can you hear it? 

The sound of the afternoon breeze, as it brushes lightly past, carries the distant laughter of children at play. It is a Saturday afternoon at “A Children’s Village,” and these children, who once had no place to call a home, are learning what it means to be a family, are learning what it means to be loved.

This is Father Joe Carroll’s dream for “A Children’s Village” – a dream that will soon become reality.

Father Joe’s Villages is developing plans for the 200-bed facility for foster and homeless youth to be located at the Flying “A” Ranch in eastern San Diego County. The plans include 25 homes where up to eight children will live with trained, married couples whose full-time job it will be to help them grow into healthy and productive adults. Also included are an on-site school, gymnasium, dining hall, indoor pool, athletic fields, medical clinic and an interfaith chapel. 

“I’ve always been a fan of what Father Flannigan did when he founded Boys Town in Nebraska,” says Father Joe. “I’m very excited that we will have the same opportunity here in Southern California – the opportunity to create a place for children who for one reason or other have been abandoned by, or who have had to abandon, their families.”

Permit applications were submitted to the County of San Diego in early August of this year, thus beginning the necessary review process prior to building the estimated $40 million facility. The Village’s timetable has construction beginning in late 2005.

For the time being, though, we are left only with our dreams of what it will be – a place of healing past sorrows and of finding new joys; a place of rules and responsibility, but at the same time, of freedom; a place where children will learn what it takes to make it in the real world while being sheltered from it; in short, a place where kids can be kids while they learn what it means to be adults.

Can you see it?

For more information, please contact Bill Bolstad at bill.bolstad@neighbor.org.