Help Us Fund Our New Home and A New School Year
Reaching $5,000 allows us to outfit 100 foster children for their first days at a new school or new community
Hope in a Suitcase is in urgent need of funding to:
** Outfit foster children heading BACK TO SCHOOL; and
** Create a NEW HOME for our (free of charge) “Shopping Days”.
Our “Shopping Days”
Many children enter the foster care system with nothing but the clothes on their backs. Hope in a Suitcase’s “Shopping Days” allow referred foster tweens/teens to choose new, quality items so they can start their next chapter with confidence and dignity. Being able to choose for themselves NEW items that spark joy and fit their personal body types, needs and style is particularly meaningful to foster tweens and teens, who often feel at the mercy of other people’s decision. Children typically arrive quiet and tentative, but walk away feeling special and confident with duffel bags and school backpacks filled with brand new clothing, shoes, books, toiletries and art supplies…all FREE OF CHARGE. As one social worker attested, “It is an amazing transformation not only in appearance, but in spirit. You have to see it to fully understand it.”
Help Us Build Our New Home!
Our landlord sold and recently tore down our original “open air” headquarters. The good news is that our New Home will be a Giant Leap Forward:
• Ample interior space for our “Shopping Boutique” (free of charge) will allow us to host a maximum number of highest need children during their most vulnerable times, such as when they initially enter foster care and when they transition between different foster homes and face their first days with a new family or in a new school.
• Flexible and expansive space will help create meaningful volunteer engagements, build opportunities and facilitate lasting connections with the foster community. We will be able to help children get the items they need quickly and effectively, RAIN or SHINE!
There’s a lot of work to be done, and many items needed: From backpacks to duffel backs, dressing rooms to shelving, and clothing, shoes and art supplies to stock those shelves. We cannot do it alone - Our volunteer led effort and the foster children we serve need your help.
Please donate any amount you can. And please spread the word to help grow our grass-roots effort.