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LOS ANGELES – Having experienced first-hand – and overcome – the barriers foster youth face, Franco Vega sought to use those experiences to ensure system-impacted youth have the necessary resources and community to build a successful future.

That led to him founding The RightWay Foundation to carry out that very mission.

His continued work doing so as The RightWay Foundation Founder/CEO is why he was recently recognized as the Rams' fifth "pLAymaker" honoree of 2024.

"It's an honor," Vega said. "As a former orphan raised by the system as a youth, you never dream about nothing like this. So I'm deeply honored, humble, nervous at same time, nervous like a little kid. I don't know why, I'm just scared, but it's an honor. It means a lot to me, you know? And so when I go home and wake up in the morning and see all my other foster youth, I can say that people are looking out for us, and then the Rams, they're looking out for us.

"This is big. This is very big."

The RightWay Foundation's mission is built on four pillars: mental health, employment, housing and community.

Its core program is Operation Emancipation, a 32-hour trauma-informed and healing-centered employment readiness workshop that builds competency in stress management, communications and problem-solving personally and professionally. Once completed, youth have access to "one-on-one therapy, housing navigation, case management, job coaching, employment opportunities, workplace mentoring, vocational training, financial capability coaching, and community," per the foundation's website.

Meanwhile, Operation Housing First provides supportive, dedicating housing and financial capability and money management services for homeless transition-age youth, while Operation Second Chance provides mental health and job readiness programming for justice-impacted, probation youth.

The foundation also offers Operation Pursuit (career building and long term well-being), Operation Positive Parent (trauma-informed support for young parents) and Operation Guide (community members mentoring transition-age foundation youth).

"Well, our mission is simple," Vega said. "We help foster youth who have been through severe trauma, we provide them with jobs, housing and mental health services, and we don't look at their past. And that's our program. It's 18 to 25 years old, but once they get in, they never leave, so they can join at 25 and stay with us till they're 45. Our mission is to provide a community, healthy, family atmosphere – something they never had – and then to make sure they know the trauma that they went through wasn't their fault, but it is their life, and they can heal from the trauma themselves, and that's what we're here (for), to help them heal."

For Vega, inspire change "means the world."

"We live in a funny world right now, and we need to change a lot," Vega said. "I'm just not satisfied with the status quo. I think no matter how successful anyone is, we need to give back, and we need to help pull someone else up who needs our help. So that's what inspire change means to me."

When it comes to inspiring change in one's own community, Vega indicated actions set the best example.

"Just showing up, being a role model, walking the walk, talking the talk and walking the walk," Vega said. "Especially for these NFL players, they should show professionalism and be a mirror, and then our kids will follow these guys. And that's what I think we need to push. I think the Rams are doing a good job right now, and so I just can't wait to see how this collaboration (goes) and how we build from here."