The Children’s Defense Fund Leave No Child Behind® mission is to ensure every child a Health Start, a Head Start, a Fair Start, a Safe Start and a Moral Start in life and successful passage to adulthood with the help of caring families and communities.  CDF provides a strong, effective and independent voice for all the children of America who cannot vote, lobby or speak for themselves.  We pay particular attention to the needs of poor and minority children and those with disabilities.  CDF educates the nation about the needs of children and encourages preventive investments before they get sick, drop out of school, get in trouble or suffer family breakdown. 

In 1998, CDF-California was established in Oakland to meet the needs of underserved children in the state of California.  The CDF-Los Angeles office was opened in 2001, and now serves as the hub for CDF-California’s programmatic and policy work in the areas of education,  youth leadership training and development, and school push-out and juvenile justice reform—particularly in Southern California.

Contact Our Offices

Click on the following links to view the contact information for our offices

• Los Angeles office contact information
• Oakland office contact information

Office Locations