Love and Consistency: Our Partnership with Friends of the Children

Riza is honored to partner with Friends of the Children, an organization we've collaborated with for many years. Over the last six years, we've developed and piloted our app alongside mentors in the Portland and Klamath chapters.

How Friends Shaped Riza

Friends has profoundly shaped Riza. Duncan Campbell has been a mentor and friend to our founder Cynthia for 30 years, and many of Riza's relationship features were born from conversations with Duncan and from witnessing the evidence-based practices Friends uses every day. We share a passion for long-term relationships, strength-based approaches, using data for good, and equipping mentors with tools that work in the real world.

A Shared Philosophy of Love and Consistency

At the heart of both Riza and Friends is a belief in the power of love. Mentors practice unconditional positive regard with their youth through every challenge and success, blending support with accountability. This philosophy aligns perfectly with the Riza method, which is why mentors have found our platform to be such a natural fit.

To learn more about Friends of the Children, visit their website or read a recent Forbes article titled "Mentorship Helps Foster Youth Find Stability in School." The piece features Erica Reid, Senior Director of Chapter Success at Friends of the Children National, and explores how Friends addresses the chronic instability many youth in foster care face.

Erica explains the Friends model: children are matched with professional mentors for 12+ years, no matter what. The results speak for themselves—for every dollar spent, communities save over $7 in social costs.

"Consistency is the intervention," Erica says. "When a child has one adult who shows up again and again, despite everything else changing, that's when trust is built. That's when children begin to believe that success is possible." Riza's tools are built to help mentors provide exactly this kind of consistent support. We're grateful for our partnership with Friends and excited to be developing another pilot program with Friends of the Children Boston, working with affinity groups starting in 2026. Thank you, Friends of the Children!