The Journey Of A Foster Child Is Not An Easy One

Archive for the ‘#CauseItsSummer’ Category

The Journey Of A Foster Child Is Not An Easy One

September 23rd, 2010, by Sloane Berrent. 4 Comments »

Today is the final #CauseItsSummer guest post and as such we’re doing a double header! Once a week this summer, The Causemopolitan has featured a guest post that will inspire you right up out of your seat to get involved and give back in a special series called Cause It’s Summer. Featured bloggers will be sharing their own reflections and stories, tips and resources, and perspective on philanthropy, social entrepreneurship and their own cause-filled life. This week welcome Stephanie Schneider, who works at X PRIZE by day and blogs at Paisley Petunia at night. Stephanie has one of the biggest hearts of anyone I know and I’m honored for her to share her personal experience working with foster kids here on The Causemopolitan.

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Check out www.fosterhood.tumblr.com to follow one mom's journey through foster care

Imagine being a young child and suddenly taken from the only home that you have ever known and separated from every familiar face in your life? Frightening, no?!

The journey of a foster child is not an easy one.

And neither is that of the foster parent. But I cannot think of a better, more giving role. Foster parents open their own homes and hearts to provide a temporary, safe haven for children in crisis.

In 2004, I became acquainted with the foster care system at my first bona-fide real world job. Fresh out of college, I was bright eyed, naïve and hopeful. I landed at Southern California Foster Family & Adoption Agency in Los Angeles, CA. The agency is dedicated to helping abused and neglected children find secure, stable, nurturing homes to live in, until such time as they are reunited with their birth families, are adopted or become independent adults.

My first month on the job, I attended the foster parent orientation classes that are required to become a certified foster home. Requirements vary by state, but here are some of the qualifications to be a foster parent:

You must be 25 years of age
You need to have a safe, clean home with room for a child(ren) and their belongings
No one in your home, or caring for the child, may have a criminal record
You must be open to a team approach for the care of the placed children, cooperating fully with agency, county personnel and birth families

Over the next two years, I learned so much about the bureaucracy of the foster care system in America. My thoughts on how to improve this decaying, failing system are too long for this post. But along with these challenges, I witnessed the joy in reuniting a child with their parents or extended family (when it was the best thing for the child). I participated in keeping adoptable sibling sets together by matching them with new parents that were waiting patiently to have a family. The creation of new families through adoption is a beautiful thing. We watched as children that had been neglected or abused flourished from the nurturing care of a foster/adoptive parent. The news tends to only report on the horror stories in the foster care system. But I wish they would highlight more stories about the heroes of foster care – foster parents (and social workers) that are so giving of their love, patience and time.

Now, I know that becoming a foster parent is a life changing decision and many of you reading this might not be in a position to fit the requirements above at this time. However, your local foster family agency can always use your help:
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Giving Back: Green Eggs & Chocolate

September 23rd, 2010, by Sloane Berrent. No Comments »

Only two left! Once a week this summer, The Causemopolitan has featured a guest post that will inspire you right up out of your seat to get involved and give back in a special series called Cause It’s Summer. Featured bloggers will be sharing their own reflections and stories, tips and resources, and perspective on philanthropy, social entrepreneurship and their own cause-filled life. This week welcome Andrew Seely, creator and host of the chocolate web show, Melts In Your Pocket. Andrew knows all there is to know about chocolate and shares some of the greenest chocolate companies he knows. Chocolate to make the world a better place, that’s something I can take a bit out of!
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Maybe not so much the eggs part, but put green and chocolate together and you really have something. While I have run into actually green colored chocolate, there’s a Lotsa Matcha White Chocolate Bar from William Dean Chocolates (which I tasted when I was a tasting judge for the San Francisco International Chocolate Salon), it’s not so unusual for chocolate companies these days to be thinking about the environment and chocolate.

In many ways the chocolatiers who are making chocolate, not only care about finding the perfect cacao beans to eventually turn into mouthwatering treats, but they also care deeply about doing so in an environmentally conscious way. The ideas of sustainability and organics have become just as important as making sure there is a perfect balance between sugar and cacao.

Sloane was a guest on my web show Melts In Your Pocket a while back and she brought with her a Green & Blacks 85% dark chocolate bar, for the reason that it is a certified organic chocolate bar. You can watch her episode here and the second part here.

More and more chocolate companies are turning to organically sourced materials such as Dagoba Chocolates, who are embedding such values into their businesses, on top of being really great tasting chocolate.

One company who I think stands heads and above in not only making wonderful chocolate but also has an amazing attitude towards how they source their chocolate and how they give back to the communities from which they get their chocolate is TCHO.

TCHO (pronounced ch-oh), is a San Francisco based company that is best described as a tech startup that happens to make chocolate. I got the opportunity to visit their factory and sit down with their CCO (chief chocolate officer) and Co-Founder Timothy Childs. You can watch my interview with him here (and above). One of the things that we got to talk about was TCHO’s Source Program.

TCHO’s Source Program is more than meets the eye. Not only is the program focused on being very selective about where their cacao beans come from and how much they pay the farmers for their products. The program goes one further and is about giving back to the communities they purchase from.

Not just giving back money or water wells or clothes, but knowledge. Knowledge about the entire chocolate making process, essentially giving farmers the tools and skills to take their product (the beans) and go fully from bean to chocolate. Talk about full circle sustainability.
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826LA Heats Up

August 26th, 2010, by Sloane Berrent. 1 Comment »

Once a week this summer, come back to The Causemopolitan to read a guest post that will inspire you right up out of your seat to get involved and give back in a special series called Cause It’s Summer! Featured bloggers will be sharing their own reflections and stories, tips and resources, and perspective on philanthropy, social entrepreneurship and their own cause-filled life. This week welcome Laura Hertzfeld who shares her personal experience volunteering with 826LA. It’s amazing to think how your life can change when you dedicate yourself to giving back. Thanks Laura for sharing your story!
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What do you get when you mix a whole bunch of LA writer types and a slew of creative kids with a space to mash words up, take pictures and share what’s going on in their community?

I have lived in Venice, California since 2005 and while I spend my fair share of time drinking lattes at the fancy coffee shop and biking on the boardwalk, I also experience the neighborhood in a different way once a week – by spending time helping make a newspaper by and for the younger contingent of this diverse west side community.

The 826 writing centers were founded by author Dave Eggers as a space for kids, first in San Francisco, and now the 826 centers have expanded around the country and created a new model for tutoring focused on creative and expository writing stills, including 826LA, where I volunteer.

Schools make up the backbone of any community, but since I’m not a parent I have little interaction with the local educational system. Volunteering at 826 has given me a huge amount of insight into the successes and shortcomings of local schools. There are students at 826 from many different backgrounds, a wide range of educational resources at home, and a variety of types of schooling, including home school and private schools as well as the magnet and public institutions. Having a place beyond the classroom with volunteers who are accomplished in their fields and can spend one-on-one time with students can make a huge difference.
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Challenge Post: The Allure of a Challenge

August 19th, 2010, by Sloane Berrent. 3 Comments »

Once a week this summer, come back to The Causemopolitan to read a guest post that will inspire you right up out of your seat to get involved and give back in a special series called Cause It’s Summer! Featured bloggers will be sharing their own reflections and stories, tips and resources, and perspective on philanthropy, social entrepreneurship and their own cause-filled life. This week welcome Alexa Brandt, who you might remember from her guest post last summer. Almost a year to the day, Alexa challenges us to make the best of our end of summer. Complete one of her challenges? Let me know how it went!
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This summer I’ve had challenges on my mind. I spent my MBA summer internship immersed in an environment focused on online competitions, crowdsourcing and tech entrepreneurship at ChallengePost in New York City. Under the guidance of ChallengePost’s impressive founder Brandon Kessler and his expert staff, I learned how a challenge can generate support for a specific issue and inspire collective problem solving. Given the frenzy of excitement surrounding the site, I couldn’t help but think about the role challenges have played in my own life.

The thrill of competition, the crusade to achievement, and the satisfaction of completing a goal have made challenges an effective tool to propel me into action. I often reframe key life decisions as personal challenges. In doing so, I devise a structured plan to achieve a specific milestone. Setting a personal challenge is not a hard process, but can make difficult tasks seem more bearable. Most importantly, it requires me to set a deadline for completing each goal. Here a couple of examples from my own life:

In 2002, following my graduation from UCLA and entrance into the working world, I found myself feeling disconnected from my female peers. I challenged myself to devise a forum to unite smart, savvy women in Los Angeles. As a result I founded the Ladies Lounge, a multi-city social networking group for 22-35 year old women.
In 2003, I wanted to take a six-month sabbatical from my career to travel in Latin America. I sat down, wrote a departure date on a piece of paper, signed it and considered it a contract to myself. I left nine months later, but only because I had challenged myself to meet a time-sensitive goal.

With just a few weeks of summer remaining, I would like to pose a challenge to each of you. I challenge you each to achieve one new goal – big or small.

Wondering where to start? Here are a few suggestions:

Philanthropy
Identifying a cause that is near and dear to your heart is not challenging, but finding the right nonprofit organization to support it can be. Take a small step towards identifying the right nonprofit by challenging yourself to do one charitable thing this summer. Organize a group volunteer activity for you and your friends or colleagues. Often food banks like the Los Angeles Regional Food Bank can put a group to good use on a weekend, making it the perfect option for busy professionals to give back. Host a small donor circle event at your home in support of a charity. Pick a fun theme like a chili cook-off or bocce ball tournament and simply ask guests to donate $10-20 to attend in support of a specific charity. Step Up Women’s Network has done a fantastic job engaging members to host fun donor circle events like Cocktails & Canines and a VIP Screening of Eat, Pray, Love. If you are feeling extra motivated, consider devising a unique fundraising platform to generate funds for a cause. My dear friend Sloane Berrent’s Cause its my Birthday campaign is one of my favorites to date – 7 days, 7 cities, 7 parties, 1 cause.
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Khaki-Wearing Westerners Do Not Have The Answers

August 12th, 2010, by Sloane Berrent. 4 Comments »

Once a week this summer, come back to The Causemopolitan to read a guest post that will inspire you right up out of your seat to get involved and give back in a special series called Cause It’s Summer! Featured bloggers will be sharing their own reflections and stories, tips and resources, and perspective on philanthropy, social entrepreneurship and their own cause-filled life. This week welcome Milena Arciszewski, who I first met in the Philippines last summer where we were both Kiva Fellows. I have a ton of respect for Milena, her courageous story and journey creating her new venture, Pando Projects. From Westernized volunteer to self-aware activist, Milena’s story is one we can all relate to. What is the story that shaped you? Email me at sloane@thecausemopolitan.com to share your story in an upcoming guest post.

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In 2008, I quit my job as an investment banker in New York and left to volunteer in Bosnia, Kenya, and the Philippines. I still remember the satisfaction of cleaning out my desk and leaving the office for the last time. The sun hit my face and I smiled a magnanimous smile – thinking that I was so brave and selfless to leave for a year to help people in developing nations.

For the majority of my time abroad I was a typical Western volunteer, wearing “sexless t-shirts and over-zippered khaki shorts” and thinking that I had the solutions to problems I couldn’t even begin to understand. It’s hard for me to admit this on a blog; it took me a long time to even admit it to myself. But I need to be honest about my initial superiority complex, because I think it’s a common problem among Western volunteers and aid workers, and is reflective of the larger problems of the Western aid model.

There was one specific experience that put me in my place and cemented my skepticism of Western aid. In Kenya I volunteered at an organization that trains teenage girls to be cooks, tailors, and hairdressers. These teenage girls live in the slums and many of them are single mothers, high school drop-outs, and/or sex workers. The program gives them an amazing opportunity to turn their lives around. Based on my experience as a banker, I was brought in to teach them business skills and raise money to pay for the equipment and supplies they needed to start their own businesses. I was ecstatic! It was such an amazing program and opportunity for me to make a real difference in their lives. I thought the program was a brilliant strategy for helping them break the cycle of poverty.

But nothing is ever as simple as it seems. The issues challenging these girls were so complex and so nebulous, that many of my initial assumptions for designing the program proved to be wrong. And despite my “expertise,” the program faced challenges I had never anticipated. For one, the girls didn’t want to work. As typical teenage girls, they showed up late, made excuses, and avoided responsibility. Secondly, the community rallied against the new businesses. There was already so much competition in their neighborhoods that the new center was perceived as a threat and attacked with salacious rumors that drove customers away. By the time I left Kenya, the program was a “success” in that we had trained the girls to be entrepreneurs and stocked a center with the equipment they needed to run their businesses. But the program was also struggling to survive, brought down by waning enthusiasm and the lack of customers. In my final days at the center, I felt overwhelmed and defeated. I had been so sure that the program would help get these girls out of poverty, but now it was unclear if we had accomplished anything more than pumping thousands of dollars into a program that no one even wanted in the first place.
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826LA Heats Up

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