Our Programs and Services
Essential Furniture and Household Items
When we arrived at T’s apartment with a van full of furniture and household goods—made possible by donors like you—we found it nearly empty. He had been sleeping on a sleeping bag, using a backpack as a pillow, and storing his clothes in a cardboard box.
There was no table to eat at, no cookware to prepare a meal, and no place to sit. It wasn’t a home.
Because of your support, that changed in a single afternoon.
By the time we left, T had a bed, furniture, and the basics needed to live with comfort and dignity. What was once an empty space became a place he could call home.
Make It Happen for Yolo County provides more than 100 essential items to young adults moving towards adulthood—ensuring they have what they need to feel safe, supported, and ready to move forward.
Your support makes transformations like this possible.
Make It Happen volunteers David, Lynn and Davis Sunrise Rotarian John
Make It Happen Youth Excellence Award
Each June, Yolo County hosts a graduation ceremony for participants in its Independent Living Skills Program, celebrating youth as they complete life-skills training, graduate from high school, and transition into adulthood.
Make It Happen for Yolo County honors one outstanding participant each year with the Make It Happen Youth Excellence Award, which includes a $500 stipend. This award recognizes a deserving young person for their academic achievement, character, personal growth, and commitment to pursuing further education or career goals.
2024 Make It Happen Youth Excellence Awardee
Bicycle Program
Transportation is a huge challenge to youth moving into young adulthood without much support. It is difficult to get a driver’s license without knowing someone with a car, or having the hours to put in practice driving. Owning a car and being responsible for gas, maintenance, insurance, etc. is very often out of reach. Traveling by public transportation can be slow at best, unreliable commonly.
In response to client feedback, Make it Happen for Yolo County initiated our bicycle program in late 2023. Our partner, Martin Luther King Senior High School in Davis, offers a class where students are taught to restore, repair and maintain donated bicycles which they then sell to the public. Each youth receiving a bike also gets locks, lights and a helmet provided by Make It Happen. In 2024, we gave out 17 bicycles. In 2025, 31 of our clients requested them. We now have one storage unit dedicated to bicycle storage, repair and maintenance, thanks to our volunteer Lynn Thorpe, who manages this program.
UCD Guardian Scholars Program
For the past 9 years, Make It Happen for Yolo County has partnered with the UC Davis Guardian Scholars Program (GSP) to provide furniture and household items for GSP students moving out of the dorms into their first independent living situations. (All Guardian Scholars have lived experience in the foster care system).
The process begins in May- Foster Care Awareness Month- when we inform GSP students about our program. Over the next 4 months, as GSP students arrive in Davis to begin their fall quarters, Make It Happen coordinates arrival times at our storage units for the students, who are served by volunteers with trucks or other vehicles to help them choose, pack, deliver and move in the items they have chosen for their homes. Last year, in 2025, we served 24 GSP students.
Before, a cardboard box for a table. After, an ACTUAL table and 4 chairs from Make It Happen.
Resources
Make It Happen for Yolo County is so grateful to have so many Yolo County resources available for our youth.
Yolo CASA is a wonderful partner, providing advocacy and mentoring for foster youth.
For our clients who are young parents, we are happy to work with Yolo Crisis Nursery, offering free, voluntary care, parenting support and wrap around services.
Unfortunately, some of our clients have been victims of domestic violence. We are grateful for Empower Yolo for their Crisis, Outreach and Family Support, Counseling and Legal Services and Safe Shelter and Housing and Teen Programs.
Shores of Hope in West Sacramento refers many clients to us. They provide housing, a Pre-School Center, Case Management, a Food and Clothing Closet and Teen Relationship Courses.
iDream-The Mac Give Back Project works to close the digital divide by providing free computers and training to those in need.
Other-
Make It Happen for Yolo County had a former client who contacted us for assistance as they were aging out of foster care and an initial independent living plan had fallen through and they were facing homelessness. We worked with the Yolo County Child Welfare Services TAY unit and the youth themselves to find them an apartment as well as resources to provide a security deposit and first month’s rent.
In 2024, Make It Happen for Yolo County joined over 100 other California non-profits led by John Burton Advocates for Youth (JBAY) to successfully advocate for preserving $13.7 million in funding for the Housing Navigation & Maintenance Program (HNMP), which works to ensure that “youth can access and successfully utilize federal Housing Choice Vouchers which subsidize rent”.