"Batman" actor Christian Bale is on a mission to help kids who could use a real-life superhero, by helping build Together California, a foster care home designed to keep orphaned siblings from being separated.

Los Angeles

Christian Bale is spearheading the construction of a foster care home in Palmdale, California, with the goal of keeping orphaned siblings together. The facility, named Together California, will feature individual houses around a central garden and be staffed by trained foster parents dedicated to caring for the children. 

Bale, inspired by his own experiences as a child and his desire to help vulnerable children, began this project 17 years ago. The initiative has received support from friends and collaborators, including Leonardo DiCaprio, and is designed to address the high rate of sibling separation in foster care. The home is expected to welcome its first residents in the near future.

Christian Bale's mission to keep foster siblings together

who I am underneath, but what I do that defines me. You can say this about Christian Bale. He really knows how to commit. The vice presidency is a mostly symbolic job. Through the years, he's remade himself as a vice president. Yep, that's him. That's a good possibility. A prize fighter, even a newsboy. Are we just gonna take what they give us? No! Or are we gonna strike? Yeah! And now he's all in on a real life mission to help some kids who could really use a hero. This little plot of land east of Los Angeles in the desert community of Palmdale is where he's trying to make magic happen. The Oscar winning actor is helping to build a foster care home, specially designed to keep orphaned siblings together. How often do foster kids get separated from their brothers and sisters? It's approximately 75% of the time. So you imagine the trauma of that, you know? Being taken from your parents and then you lose your siblings. You know? That's just something that we shouldn't be doing. Mom! Mom! Mom! Mom! Mom! Mom! Bale was a child actor and not a foster kid himself. So you might wonder why he's getting involved in this. He says he just had to. You moved around a lot as a kid. Do you think that had an effect on you? I think, I mean, look, I think it probably did, but I don't think you have to have any connection to foster care in your past. It's just about the basic understanding that as a society, how can we not take care of our children? So I don't think it requires a connection. It just requires having a heart. He says his inspiration came 17 years ago when he looked at the young daughter he had with his wife, Sibi, and thought of other kids who weren't so lucky. He started looking into foster care and found Tim McCormick, who ran foster homes in Chicago for decades and made sure all of his kids got through high school. So 100% high school graduation rate, whereas the statistic for foster kids and graduation is? About 48%. Only 3% of the 400,000 kids in foster care ever graduate college. And I think this is what this site is about. We create a place for authentic goodness to flourish, and it certainly impacts the child, but it impacts all of us. We create a different story of us as a society. They created Together California, a home for siblings, and the name really says it all. Here, siblings will all stay together in individual houses around a central garden, and they'll be cared for by trained foster parents whose only job will be to look after them. The home is designed by the architects at A.C. Martin. They usually do large-scale projects like skyscrapers. Still, A.C. Martin boss, Tom Shea, says this is one of their biggest priorities. No, we take care of these kids. We show them how much we love them. Why was this so important to you? Why'd you take this on? I think we're at a point in our society where we have to help. And for me, what's exciting is creating the next high-rise. We need to give back to society and community. This is small, but I'm tremendously proud of this project. I'm gonna out-brake you on the next turn, Bob! Bale shot the movie Ford vs. Ferrari not far from here, so he's familiar with this part of Southern California. Right now, the home is still a construction site, but Christian Bale says he can already see it all. When you look around, can you see it in your mind? Oh, absolutely, yeah. No, I love doing that. I love designing, I love architecture. And it's like, no, because I see that and I see the steps and I'm changing this around. So I adore the whole design process. And so actually seeing it really coming to happen is just very, very exciting. And so, after 17 years of slow progress and some financial help from friends like Leonardo DiCaprio, they're hoping to welcome the first kids early next year. Of course, for Bale, it's not soon enough. You said you were a little bit naive. You thought it would take a couple years to complete. Well, ignorance is bliss. If I'd have known it had been 17 years, I still would have done it. You still would have done it. There's a lot more work ahead, like fundraising and finding the right foster parents, but it's all finally starting to take shape. And to Christian Bale, it's truly the role of a lifetime. You're known as an actor who's rather intense about his roles. Have you approached this with the same intensity? More so, more so, because this is something that when I'm closing my eyes for the last time, I wanna look and say, obviously my family. I wanna be thinking about them. I wanna think about, did I do some good? Did I make any changes in the world that were useful? And this will be one of the things that I'll be most proud of when I draw my last breath.

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