Growing up in Brownsville teaches you a lot about survival. It teaches you how to keep going even when the world around you feels unstable. It teaches you how to stay strong when resources are limited and opportunities feel out of reach. But most of all, it teaches you the value of the people who hold you together.
For me, that person was my mother, Lonnice White.
She was the kind of mother whose love wasn’t loud, but steady. The type of woman whose strength showed up in consistency—showing up for me, believing in me, and reminding me that my life mattered even when circumstances said otherwise. When she passed away, everything in my world shifted. I didn’t just lose a parent, I lost my foundation.
But sometimes, out of the deepest pain, purpose grows.
On Dec. 19, or what would have been my mother’s birthday, I launched the Lonnice White Foundation, an organization dedicated to supporting children and young adults—from birth to age 21—who have lost a parent. This foundation is more than a nonprofit. It’s a mission born out of lived experience, and it’s a promise to young people across Brooklyn who are navigating something no child should have to face alone.
Thousands of young people in New York City are grieving in silence. Every day, kids walk into classrooms, gyms, and after-school programs carrying a weight most adults couldn’t handle. Some lose their parents to illness. Others to gun violence. Others to addiction, incarceration or tragic accidents. But the result is the same: a young person is suddenly pushed into emotional survival mode.
I know that feeling well, and I also know how much it matters to have support.
Grief affects everything—mental health, school performance, relationships, and how kids see their future. Yet so many children never receive counseling, mentorship, or a safe space to process their feelings. In a city as big and resourceful as ours, that gap shouldn’t exist.
The foundation will provide emotional support, mentorship, and opportunities for young people who have lost parents, so they can heal, rebuild, and thrive.
No child should have to navigate grief alone. The foundation will work with licensed therapists and youth-support specialists to provide free counseling sessions, teen grief support groups, and family guidance for guardians caring for newly parentless children.
The foundation will also offer scholarships, funding for sports and arts programs, grants for creative and academic projects and career and leadership workshops. If a young person has a passion—whether it’s basketball, music, writing, or entrepreneurship—we want to help them pursue it.
Healing doesn’t happen in isolation. It happens in the community. The foundation will host annual remembrance and empowerment events, holiday support initiatives, youth-centered workshops and collaborations with Top Press Sports to create positive outlets for kids.
When my mother passed, I learned firsthand how much guidance, stability and hope a child can lose in a single moment. But I also learned that the right support system can help rebuild everything that grief tries to destroy. The Lonnice White Foundation is my way of ensuring that no child in Brooklyn—or anywhere else—has to walk that difficult road feeling unseen. It’s a tribute to my mother’s spirit, and a commitment to honoring her through service to others.
Launching this foundation on her birthday is intentional. It turns a day of mourning into a day of meaning. It transforms loss into legacy.
Brooklyn is full of young people with dreams bigger than their circumstances. But grief can dim even the brightest potential. Our role is to remind them that their story isn’t over—and that their future still matters.
My mother spent her life pouring strength into me. Now I want to pour that strength into others.
The Lonnice White Foundation is here to make sure no child faces grief alone, and to build a community where healing, support, and opportunity are the standard—not the exception.
Because even in loss, something powerful can grow.
And sometimes, love becomes a foundation.
Savon White is a Brooklyn resident and the founder of the Lonnice White Foundation.
