Heart Crate

Causes: Children & Youth, Foster Care

Mission: When I think of the words “Foster Kid”, nothing positive comes to mind. In my image they are sad, their clothes are tattered or disheveled and they are holding a dirty teddy bear. This is the image you’ve seen many times before on billboards, or news stories, or commercials from nonprofits trying to sell you a story. That dour image tells you this is a kid you should pity and a kid that needs to be fixed. They need to be fixed because they are broken, or at least that’s the story they are trying to tell you. The worst part is that’s exactly how many kids in foster care see themselves. Why? Kids in foster care see themselves as broken because that’s how we see them. And that’s how the world has treated them. Heart Crate has a different story to tell. “Foster Kid” can to often become these children’s identity, after being ripped away from their parents, being placed in a strange home, dealing with court, therapy and everything else that comes as a consequence for the abuse and neglect they never asked for. One thing most professionals in the field fail to think about is what kids are actually leaving behind when a removal occurs. The obvious losses are their parents, to some extent their surrounding family, and their home. What most tend to forget about is the child’s identity. They walk out of their home and into their first placement with what? A trash bag full of clothes, maybe a toothbrush and a stuffy. So they leave behind their things, but things can be replaced right? It's a nice idea, but in practice it seldom ever happens because the only people that knew about that child’s passions and interests were just taken away from them. If you ask a child to tell you who they are, they’ll look at you confused, wondering what you’re talking about. But if you ask a child about the things they like, they’ll typically talk your ear off about their favorite colors, games, movies, tv shows and all the characters they keep close to their heart. If you take the time to listen to them, they’ll describe the worlds they went to when their parents were at their worst. Maybe it was Iron Man there to make them feel strong or Pinkie Pie to make them laugh, even when it’s the hardest thing to do. These worlds and characters, passions and interests are incredibly important and make kids feel like kids. There are over 400,000 kids in foster care across the US that have not yet received the support they deserve. You can change this. You can play a major role in a child’s story by providing relief in their time of need. Not the kind of relief that can be mass produced or created on an assembly line, but relief that is customized and personal. Relief that validates their identity and makes them feel heard. We can restore the gateways they used to their imagination and help them feel the joy of receiving a gift from someone who gets it. Support for Heart Crate is support for the kids that need it most. They’re not “Foster Kids”, they’re just kids.