This week, Leon Powe was honored with the NBA’s Community Assist Award for April. Powe’s dedication, though, goes beyond just one month.

“I think it came from back in the day with my mom,” Powe said. “She used to be a nice person like that and want to help everybody. I used to tell her, ‘You can’t help everybody’ and now everybody’s telling me, ‘You can’t help everybody.’ It came from there and the stuff I went through.”

Over the past year Powe, 25, has been getting Fresh Start Family Services up and running in the Bay Area. Inspired by his own childhood battles of foster care, homelessness, and instability -- including the death of his mother -- Powe has dedicated himself to improving the lives of others children in need.

“I’ve been thinking about that for a long time,” he said. “Even when I was younger I always liked to help people and it goes back to my little brothers. I always would give my last to give to them.”

Powe wanted his organization to be different than a traditional one-on-one mentoring program. He felt it was important to provide children with necessary resources to thrive after they are released from the foster care system at the age of 18. Powe decided to offer information on securing housing and continuing education.

“There are a lot of kids out there who need help,” Powe said. “I was one of the foster kids and somebody took the time to help me and it really paid off for me, not just making it to the NBA but just being a good human being and a good person and just knowing about life and how it works in school and stuff. I didn’t think we had enough kids out there that really were thinking like that and we were trying to figure out a way how to get our message across to kids and to help them succeed in life.”

The plan is to start small, five or six mentors for up to 15 kids between the ages of 14 and 21. Each mentor will be required to dedicate two to three hours a week. It is important to Powe every child in his program receives specialized individual attention. He knows his life would have turned out differently had he not been matched up with Ward.

Powe admits that he got mixed up in the wrong crowd growing up. As a teenager, he was approached by a friend to, “do some bad stuff.” His intuition kicked in and he turned back. The following morning, he found out his friend had been caught. He has been in and out of jail ever since.

“I’ve seen a lot of kids growing up in and out of foster care, in and out of group homes, in and out of jail, and I’ve got a lot of friends that were the same way,” Powe said. “I just thought my mentor took me in and showed me a new way of life, and that’s not the way I was thinking at first. At first I was thinking in a negative way and thinking there was not place out there for me for school, just to do something period. He had me thinking a different way, and if you put your mind to what you wanted to do like I did in school and my grades went from really low to a 3.8 [G.P.A]. And I never thought I could do that, but he believed in me so I believed in myself and I just said, this is worth a try.”

Powe hopes that his program will bring awareness to those who don’t think they have the option of a better life. He remembers feeling the burden lifted when he realized he could rely on his mentor, Bernard Ward. The irony is that Powe became more of an adult once he had one to depend on.

“Oh man, it was a relief. Sometimes it’s hard to deal with me,” he said. “At first I didn’t start off as a cool, nice talking young man. There were a couple of struggles. I used to talk back because I saw one way. I was a nice person but my way of thinking was not that good because I was thinking there was only one way to live. I had my friends, my family, but my hood I was in, we always wanted to be down with each other.

“But he taught me you can’t do that all your life and there’s going to be a point in time when you need to be a young man and grow up. And then what are you going to do? And I started thinking, ‘You’re right. I’m going to have to do something else.’”

In recognition of his community service, the NBA donated $5,000 to Powe’s foundation. It is just the beginning of his mission to give back.

“I always used to help everybody and some people tell me I help too much,” Powe said. “They tell me I can’t save everybody but I say, ‘I will try. I will try to save everybody.’”