Heart Gallery of Lane County - A Family for Every Child
A Family For Every Child is honored and grateful to be one of the 5 recipients for this years
Great Rotary Duck Race Fund Raiser
Our Mission:
A FAMILY FOR EVERY CHILD IS DEDICATED TO FINDING LOVING, PERMANENT FAMILIES FOR EVERY WAITING OREGON FOSTER CHILD.
A Family For Every Child, a nonprofit organization, was started by Christy Obie-Barrett and dozens of dedicated and passionate volunteers. In 2006, AFFEC was formed and developed into an organization focused on finding permanent and loving adoptive homes for Oregon's waiting children. Our intention is to develop programs that assist special-needs/challenging-to-place foster children in finding their own Forever Families.
We started with our first sole project called The Heart Gallery in November, 2006, and now we have blossomed into ten incredibly successful programs. None of this could have occurred without the wonderful support from this community’s sources, including volunteers, sponsors, photographers, in-kind donors and many more.
Lane County is full of generous and giving souls who want to make a difference, and many have stepped up. The following is a recap of what can be done when we are all on the same team and working together:
Facts & Figures:
* children in foster care in the United States
* children in the State of Oregon
* children in foster care in Lane County
Our Facts & Figures:
* youths have been enrolled in our new . We have already made 25 successful matches!
*over children we have recruited for have joined their ! These were children from all over the state of Oregon!
* children featured from our First Heart Gallery just a year ago have found their Forever Families!
* families have joined our .
* children have received services from our new .
*children from all over Oregon are currently being recruited for on our newly updated website. Many of the children are featured in short videos.
* inquiry calls and emails are received weekly from our venues and our photo listing of Oregon foster children on our website.
* venues, up from one just a year ago, are currently running in Lane County. Some of our new venues include Creswell and Cottage Grove, with many other business-community advocates joining our cause.
*Heart Gallery Child of the Month has gone weekly in all three major media forms: TV, radio and newspaper. This means children or sibling groups are featured each month.
*We have brought our to buses and billboards all over the state.
*We have been invited to participate in a National Research Project for our , putting us in the same league with cities like Los Angeles and San Francisco.
*In just the first month, over enthusiastic volunteers joined our , helping children leave foster care with a book of memories from their past.
*For months we have successfully displayed in an area church. Our continues to reach out in many ways.
* children received gifts from our this year.
What all of the above means is that we have worked in one or more of our programs with over children in our very first year . . . and that means we have worked with of the children in foster care in Lane County, Oregon! Just imagine what next year holds!
All of our existing programs will continue throughout 2008. One of our primary focuses of the upcoming year is the “aging-out” group of teens. These are children ten years old and older who are at risk of “aging out” of the foster care system. Statistics tell us that only half of these youths will graduate from high school, and fewer than three percent will graduate from college.
Finding permanent parents for teens before they exit foster care, no matter what their age, is the single greatest positive youth-development program. The greatest need in the adoption field is to do special recruitment, retention and support for adoption of children ages ten and older.
Our focus will be lifetime-committed parents, adoption and teen-permanency programs, which will include Family Finding, ten-and-older adoptions and mentoring.
As you can see, it has been quite a year and we thank you for that! We hope to continue to have your involvement and support in the future, as it is evident through our successful programs that we making a difference. We could never be doing such incredible work without you and the support of the very generous Lane County community.
May YOU reach for the stars in 2008!
If you wish to contact us by e-mail, fax or phone please contact us at:
A Family For Every Child
(541) 683-5769
(541) 954-9626- main
(541) 683-1017 - fax
Email: Cbobie@aol.com (Christy Obie-Barrett)
