» The Heart Gallery Southeast
Website: www.giftforachild.org
On any given day in the United States, more than 100,000 foster children are waiting to be adopted by someone who can provide a permanent, loving home. While they wait, these children often live with foster parents, with relatives, or in group homes or institutions. Extensive recruitment efforts have been undertaken at the state and federal levels to identify homes for these children. Yet many children still wait a very long time for a new family. Gift for a Child is hoping to change this as we launch the Heart Gallery Southeast Program to include the Heart Gallery Georgia, Heart Gallery Mississippi and Heart Gallery Tennessee.
The Heart Gallery Southeast is a collaborative effort between Gift for a Child, Georgia Department of Family and Children Services, Mississippi Department of Human Services and the Tennessee Department of Children Services. The Heart Gallery Southeast Program is an adoption education and recruitment program of Gift for a Child. The Heart Gallery is designed to raise awareness and educate the community concerning the urgent need for foster and adoptive families in Southeast states, especially boys and girls for whom finding forever families is more difficult: sibling groups, special needs, minority and older children. Professional photographers photograph foster children whose parental rights have terminated for an exhibit designed to recruit prospective adoptive families.
» The Heart Gallery Georgia
At any given time there are thousands of children who are in the permanent legal custody of the Georgia Department of Human Resources due to unresolved family crises. Many of these children will become available for adoption. Some of the children's parents have voluntarily given up their parental rights. However, most have been removed from their birth parents' homes by the courts and their parents' parental rights have been terminated due to abuse, neglect or abandonment. Most of these children have been cared for in foster homes while waiting to be adopted. The Heart Gallery Georgia will launch in 2006 and is one of the ways we help to identify and recruit prospective adoptive families for these children.
» The Heart Gallery Mississippi
Gift for a Child is planning to launch the Heart Gallery Mississippi in 2006 and will serve as a recruitment tool to identify prospective families that may be interested in adopting a child from foster care and help them learn about some of the children through photographs. The Heart Gallery Mississippi will raise general awareness of the need for adoptive homes for Mississippi’s waiting children. Some of the places you will get to see the exhibit are libraries, banks, and other places where families go each day.
» The Heart Gallery Charlotte
Approximately, one third of the 10K children in foster care in North Carolina will be adopted. Last year, approximately 1,371 of these children were adopted. Court action to terminate parental rights is necessary before they are available for adoption. Of those who are legally free, many are in various stages of being adopted. There are several hundred children in foster care who are currently available for adoption and do not have a family already chosen.
» The Heart Gallery Tennessee
The Heart Gallery Tennessee is an adoption recruitment program designed by Gift for a Child to help raise awareness about the more than 800 children in the guardianship of the State of Tennessee. The exhibit is planned to launch in 2006 will highlight some of the children waiting for families to offer them a permanent home. Most children range from early school age to teenage years; some have one or more siblings and there are all ages of African-American and mixed race children waiting for an adoptive family. Many of these children have been waiting for years for someone to want them, show them the love they need and deserve, and give them a sense a belonging.
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