For Natalie Dixon, a graphic design senior at California Baptist University, helping foster kids is her Great Commission service.

Dixon is the founder of Rose Again Foundation, a nonprofit organization that assists foster children through a variety of programs. This summer the Murrieta Chamber of Commerce recognized the efforts and success of Dixon by nominating her foundation for a Non-Profit of the Year award. Additionally, Dixon has also been nominated for the national Roslyn S. Jaffe Award, given to individuals that are seeking to make the world a better place for women and children.

Dixon’s passion for her current ministry was ignited as a high school student when she went on a trip, with her dad, to a Christian orphanage in Guatemala.

“I had never been to a place in the world that was so poor,” Dixon recalled. “Yet these were some of the most joy-filled kids that I had ever met.”

Dixon came back with a desire to help kids in need, and she ultimately set her sights on foster children. After researching and interviewing foster families and children to discover their needs, she, with the help of her family and friends, started the Rose Again Foundation in 2013. The name comes from a combination of Dixon’s middle name and her desire to see kids “rise again” out of their circumstances and become wholesome individuals.   

“It felt like God opened all these doors,” Dixon said.

The nonprofit serves Southwest Riverside County. Some of the programs Dixon has incorporated into her organization include Kids of Summer that funds extra-curricular activities; Bless the Children that provides gifts during the Christmas season; and the Thrive Boxes initiative that gives 18-year-olds, who have aged out of the foster system, household goods. Additionally, this past spring, for the first time, the foundation offered two scholarships for college.

The Rose Again Foundation holds fundraisers, applies for grants and receives donations from individuals and organizations to pay for its programs.

The CBU community also has helped Dixon along her journey of launching the foundation. When a professor learned the nonprofit needed a logo, he made that part of an assignment in a design class. An art professor has offered Dixon art for a fundraiser. Dixon’s husband, Jeffrey Dixon, is a CBU nursing major, and the School of Nursing has made some of the foundation’s events a volunteer opportunity for nursing students.

Dixon said she hopes by providing for the children’s needs it will help in their overall well-being.

“The foundation was founded on the basis of loving these kids like Christ loves us,” Dixon said.