FIU student honored for foster youth leadership and advocacy

By Susan Feinberg

In December 2009, Julia Villamizar, an undergraduate student at FIU’s School of Social Work, was honored for her pioneering work on behalf of foster children with the Youth Advocate Award at the Florida Children’s First  2009 Miami-Dade Children’s Advocacy Reception. Villamizar told us her inspiring story of how she grew up in a foster home and became a national advocate for children in foster care around the country.

When Villamizar was 16-years-old, she was removed from her home and placed in foster care with her younger sister in Miami. Her one-year-old brother was placed in another foster home.  Although her experience was positive, she had a hard time adjusting to a new environment and the separation from her family.

Villamizar, who was emancipated at the age of 18, decided to become a positive role model and help other youth in similar situations. She co-founded the first foster youth advocacy group in South Florida – the Miami chapter of Florida Youth SHINE (Striving High for Independence and Empowerment) – and began making presentations to leaders of child welfare and foster care agencies. The group later grew and became the statewide advocacy organization Florida Youth SHINE.

“I knew that there were inadequacies in the foster care system, and I wanted to share my voice and make things right,” she recalled.

Villamizar’s national role as a foster youth advocate began in 2007 with a summer internship sponsored by the Congressional Coalition on Adoption Institute with Florida Congresswoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen. She learned the ins and outs of working with federal lawmakers and exchanged ideas and perspectives with other successful young adults who had spent their formative years in foster care.

A year later, Villamizar was named a Foster Club “All Star,” one of only 12 other young leaders from around the country who were selected for this honor.  She spent her summer in Oregon attending workshops and learning how to train, educate and make a difference in the lives of her peers in foster care. Armed with this knowledge, she made presentations at numerous national foster care conferences.

In 2009, Villamizar returned to Washington, D. C., for three days and lobbied with the National Foster Care Coalition and Casey Family Programs for foster care prevention programs.  She met with members of Florida’s Congressional Delegation and legislators from the House Ways and Means Committee and the Senate Finance Committee and discussed the need to support biological parents in ways that help children and families stay together.

Villamizar believes that society as a whole pays a price for the inadequacies in the foster care system.

“If we don’t intervene and help these kids, they end up filling our prisons and becoming teen parents,” she explained. “Some of them become sick and even die.

“One of the kids in my group, Florida SHINE, lived in a bad neighborhood and got shot in the back and died,” she added. “I felt really bad. Kids like him are young, and they have a future.”

After graduating from FIU, Villamizar plans to attend graduate school and become an advocate for children and families. “I want to be at the top- either in an administrative position or with my own organization or group,” she said. “That’s the only way I’m going to affect change.”