A colorful display greets visitors to The Pumpkin Patch, where pumpkin sales help fund Compassion Planet’s mentoring, job training and support programs for young adults.

ROCKLIN, CA (MPG) - Behind a Rocklin pumpkin patch is a nonprofit that began with one young man and a couple that opened their door to him.

Every two minutes, a child enters the U.S. foster care system. By the time they turn 18, they are expected to make their way in the world alone, without a family, finances, or anyone to call. So when a young adult named Marvin turned up on Scott and Jacquie Flanagan’s doorstep, they took him in, and helped him navigate job applications, showed him how to make important life decisions, and mentored him in finding his footing as an independent adult.

The experience showed the Flanagans just how difficult the transition out of foster care can be for young adults without a family or support system to fall back on. So, in 2012 they founded Compassion Planet.

Today, the organization serves approximately 60 to 70 young adults each year across Placer and Sacramento Counties. Compassion Planet’s Mentoring Program works with young adults ages 18 to 24, providing workforce training, education in life skills, trauma-enforced mental health support, and real employment opportunities across 10 social enterprises.

“We work with a population that’s one of the most at-risk populations in America,” said Scott Flanagan, co-founder and executive director of Compassion Planet. “And that is when you age out of the foster care system, or in some cases, our young people come from juvenile justice. If they don’t have healthy adult mentors in their life or programs like ours, two out of three of them are going to be either homeless within the first few years, incarcerated, have a drug addiction, early rates or suicide, or they’ll be trafficked. And that’s kind of our mission is helping these young people find healthy independence, and so that’s what they get through our program.”

At Compassion Planet, young adults spend 12 to 18 months learning and growing in the Mentoring Program. More than 161 of them have graduated from the program with over 92 percent now living in healthy independence.

Now in its ninth year, Compassion Planet’s Pumpkin Patch is one of the major fundraising ventures for the organization. The pumpkin patch is open through Oct. 31 at Deer Creek Farm in Rocklin. One hundred percent of the proceeds goes to supporting the organization’s programs. 

Admission to the farm is free, allowing visitors to browse a wide assortment of pumpkins before choosing just the right one. Pumpkins are individually priced by size and type, with choices ranging from traditional carving pumpkins to decorative varieties and cooking squashes. Also available is a kid’s play area with photo opportunities, face painting, balloon animals, a petting zoo on the weekends, and fall shopping at the Deer Creek Farm Boutique.

Every pumpkin purchased helps Compassion Planet continue in its mission of providing young adults with mentoring, job training, employment and the support needed to begin building independent lives.

Pumpkins for sale at Compassion Planet’s pumpkin patch are locally grown and fresh picked from commercial partner farms in the Central Valley, such as the Van Groningen & Sons fields in the Manteca area. They provide 35,000 pounds of pumpkins each year.

Once the pumpkins arrive in Rocklin, Compassion Planet’s young adults, along with community volunteers participating in the Mentoring Program, work together to unpack, stack and arrange the rows and rows of pumpkins.

Compassion Planet relies heavily on its volunteers. Last year 368 volunteers contributed over 26,000 hours of their time.

“So, how we connect with our community is, of course through volunteers, through donors, through people who come to our fundraising events, people who shop at our enterprises. Those are really the main ways where people get plugged into our organization,” said Flanagan.

To learn more about Compassion Planet, visit www.compassionplanet.org