Hello there! My name is Elise Stoops, and I am a Girl Scout ambassador currently working on my Gold Award! This is a sustainable service project with 100 hours of work and is the highest award a Girl Scout can earn. I discovered through a family friend that there are over 250 children who come through the Department of Child Safety Welcome Center in Phoenix EACH WEEK. That means that each month, just this center alone sees around 1,000 new children come in.
Right now, there are about 13,000 children who enter foster care. That number shocked me; I had no idea that this many children were in foster care. I will be using this website to raise awareness for these foster children, add a link to help donate supplies for these children, and also show ways that you can help out :)
For donations, I am specifically going to focus on donations for teenagers' birthday gifts. One thing that is often overlooked with donations is that children who come to the welcome center might have had a birthday recently or have a birthday coming up. Some of these children have never had their own birthday presents or cakes before, and a wonderful organization called AZ Helping Hands actually helps gather donations for these birthday bags and gives them out to children. While many donate toys or other types of presents for younger children, teenagers are often overlooked. I am planning on creating a space with Crowd Rise where donations can be made towards buying gifts for these teens so that they feel special on their birthdays! I am looking forward to this project, and thank you so much for following along with me on it!
Elise, thank you for organizing this amazing project to help provide some much-needed resources to Arizona's children in foster care. You have my full support!
Rayetta Sanchez
Community Liaison
AZ Department of Child Safety