BY UNASHAMED
ROOTED
We want to do life with you.
Picture a young woman on the edge of eighteen. She's aged through the system long enough to know how it works and how it fails. She's smart, she's resourceful, she's tired of being resilient because she had no other choice. What she's never had is a place that's just hers, with people who stay.
That's who Rooted is for.
Meet the
ROOTED GIRL
She's 18 to 24. She's currently in foster care or extended foster care, still connected to DCF, still figuring out what comes next. Maybe she's finishing high school. Maybe she's in college and has nowhere to go over winter break. Maybe she's working her first real job and still doesn't have a key to anywhere.
She's not a case file. She's not a statistic in a report. She's a young woman who deserves a bedroom that's hers, a kitchen she can cook in, and adults who show up on the hard days, not just the scheduled ones.
Rooted is where she gets to exhale.
What Home Looks Like for Her
The Home
For four months to a year, she has a stable place to live while she builds the life skills, education, or employment she needs to stand on her own. Not rushed. Not alone.
The Bridge
When she's away at college and the dorms close for break, she doesn't have to wonder where she's sleeping. The Bridge keeps her housed during those in-between weeks so school stays possible.
Why It Matters
Sana Cotten, Founder & CEO of Unashamed Inc., left her adoptive home at fifteen and had to figure out independence with no one walking beside her. She built Rooted to be what she needed: not a clinical program, but a home. A place where a young woman is known by name, not by case number, and where "we want to do life with you" isn't a tagline, it's what actually happens.
​A Day in Her Life at Rooted
Morning starts without chaos. She has her own space. There's a team member she trusts down the hall if she needs one, but no one hovering. She goes to class, or to work, or to a job interview, and comes home to a house that's warm, not clinical or institutional. Someone remembers her birthday. Someone checks in when she goes quiet. Someone is proud of her the day she signs her first lease.
That's Rooted.