Fostering Great Ideas

Speak up: speak up is a group of passionate volunteers advocating to improve foster care policy. In many ways, speak up is our policy arm made of regular citizens highlighting common sense solutions that can improve the foster care system. The guiding principles of speak up: 1. The more we listen to children and youth in foster care, the better the system of care will be. 2. Children's voices need to be amplified. We should provide a platform for more dialogue and action.this is a grass-roots effort relying upon many people and focusing on a few concepts each year. In order to remain effective and on mission, we work with speak up volunteers to help them communicate as a group. We also ask those involved to spend time getting to know others who want to "speak up."

Aspire: when youth age out of foster care, there are significant challenges. They are often on their own, lacking family support for their journey. Many students work to support themselves, and if they attend college, they are living paycheck to paycheck and have excessive financial pressure. The added financial stress to maintain college housing can add significant pressure to these youth in college. Many youth will fall behind in their academics and lose hope without a caring and consistent adult to encourage goal-setting and planning for next steps after high school. Aspire encourages youth to graduate from high school and then attend and excel in college by providing accountability and support throughout their academic experience. Through consistent meetings with our education advocate and peer gatherings focused on team-building, youth begin to visualize a future for themselves. They graduate from high school, apply to college programs, and find their own pathway to success.