| Volume 61, October '08 |  |
||
|
|||
This is Najlah Feanny Hicks responding. 1. What is Heart Gallery? The Heart Gallery of New Jersey, Inc. is a unique not-for-profit corporation dedicated to raising awareness about foster children available for adoption. Through the volunteer efforts of some of the country's most prestigious photographers, portraits are taken that help capture the individuality and spirit of each foster child who is eligible to be adopted. These photographs are then shared via the web and through gallery exhibits in the hope that potential families will be moved to inquire about adoption. 2. What is your role at Heart Gallery? Co-founder, President 3. What is the best thing about your job? Having a direct impact in the creation a family is life changing. When you meet a child, when you hear the struggles they've been through and embrace their one hope, the hope of finding a forever family, you can't help but be changed. 4. What are some upcoming projects? We are currently in the midst of our "100 Waiting Children" project featuring the 100 children who have lived in New Jersey's foster care system the longest and still have not been adopted. Our goal is to introduce these orphans to potential families in hopes they will step forward and adopt these children before they "age out" of the foster care system, never having been adopted. With 25,000 kids aging out each year, there is a real potential that the next wave of homeless in America will be former foster children who were never adopted. Our next project is "Do One Thing". We'll focus on homeless teenagers trying to get their lives together and their struggles. 5. What message would you like to send to America's youth? There are hundreds of thousands of children across America who are born into families unable to care for them. Drugs, mental illness, abuse and abandonment are only a few of the horrors they have to endure. Through no fault of their own they are taken from their families and grow up as orphans. They go to your schools, they live in your neighborhood, they want what you and I have always had, a family. You are our future. Tell someone when you know a friend is being abused. Listen to a friend when their family is in crisis. Talk to a teenager who never seems to have family around. Help one person to do one thing to make one life better. No one can make it alone.
|
// archive // sign up!