Resilient Stars Foundation

Resilient Stars Foundation is a youth-led nonprofit that connects young people and their families to prevention, mental health and wellness resources, built on the belief that prevention messages land differently when they come from a peer.

Resilient Stars Foundation was founded in 2024 by Niharika (Niha) Goel, a high school student in Orange County, and received 501(c)(3) determination under EIN 33-2186234.

The Foundation began from a simple observation: young people are the audience for most prevention and wellness programming, but rarely the ones delivering it. Resilient Stars was created to change that — to put students at the front of the conversation, working alongside the clinicians, agencies and first responders whose expertise makes the information accurate.

The organization is governed by a volunteer board and run by student leaders, with adult advisors supporting programming, safety and compliance. It operates without paid staff.

Our flagship program is THRIVE: Youth Wellness Fair, a free, all-ages community fair held at Eisenhower Park in Seal Beach on Saturday, October 24, 2026, serving as the local kickoff to National Red Ribbon Week.

THRIVE brings together 25–230 partner agencies across four areas — substance-use prevention, mental health and wellness, youth leadership, and community partnerships and expects several hundred families. Confirmed partners include Rady Children's Health/CHOC, the American Red Cross, Second Harvest Food Bank, Impact Teen Drivers, The Youth Center and the Orange County Department of Education, with support from the Seal Beach Chamber of Commerce.

Every element of the day is student-led: students run the peer-led prevention session, moderate panels, and staff activity stations, with adult experts alongside them as the factual backstop. Students earn documented service hours for their work.

Beyond the fair, the Foundation builds a standing network of local prevention and wellness organizations so that families have somewhere to turn after the event ends.

As a youth-funded organization with no paid staff, our needs are practical:

Food and water for attendees at free community events
Canopies, tables and chairs for partner organizations that cannot supply their own
Printing for flyers, resource materials and bilingual handouts
In-kind goods — giveaways, activity supplies, and promotional items for youth attendees
Adult volunteers and advisors, particularly in event operations, safety and nonprofit governance
General operating support to sustain programming beyond a single annual event

Orange County, with a primary focus on north Orange County — Seal Beach, Los Alamitos, Rossmoor, Cypress, Anaheim, and surrounding communities — and partnerships reaching countywide.

I started Resilient Stars Foundation because I noticed something at every prevention assembly I sat through: the information was usually right, but it almost never came from someone my age. Students tune out a lecture. They listen to a peer.

What we're building is a place where those two things meet — young people leading the conversation, with experts standing beside them so that what gets said is accurate. That combination is harder to organize than either one alone, but it's the only version that actually works.

I'm grateful to the agencies, clinicians and first responders who have taken a youth-led effort seriously, and to the students who show up to do the work.

— Niharika (Niha) Goel, Founder

When you serve on the board of a youth-led organization, your job is different from the usual one. It isn't to direct the work — it's to make sure the young people doing it have the structure, oversight and safety net they need to do it well.

What has struck me most about Resilient Stars is how seriously our students take that responsibility. They research before they ask. They check facts with the professionals rather than assuming. When an agency raises a concern, they listen and adjust. Those are not habits you expect in high school, and they are the reason established organizations — hospitals, school districts, first responders — have been willing to stand alongside them.

Our board's role is governance, compliance and accountability: sound financial controls, appropriate adult supervision at every event, and clear boundaries between what students lead and what adults must handle. Within that structure, the vision and the work belong to them.

Prevention is a field that has spent decades talking to young people. Resilient Stars is a small experiment in what happens when young people do the talking, with experts beside them. I'm proud to support it, and grateful to the partners across Orange County who have given these students a chance.

Rahul Goel, Board Chair, Resilient Stars Foundation