Make change possible

Dear Friends and Colleagues, 

I launched an Indiegogo Generosity campaign with the hopes of building a stronger community for the next generation of youth:

Letters for Answers Fundraising Campaign

LFA's goal is to use the power of written word to allow children without families and home the opportunity to write a letter to their future families and friends. 

• What would you want to say to your future family? What do you want to tell them about yourself? 
• What about having a family and friends is important to you?
• Having your experience, how do you think parents, children, siblings, and friends should interact with one another?
• What's the first thing you would want to do with your family's support?
• How can your friends help you achieve your dreams? 

These are the questions that all of us want answers to. But, you can be sure that not having a support system in your life completely hinders a child from receiving those answers. 

Overview of Project

Letters for Answers will start its pilot program with 5 partnering school systems and foster homes/youth centers in the Bay Area:

1. Youth Homes, Inc.
2. Hickman Home for Children, Inc.
3. Foster a Dream
4. Families for Children
5. Bay Area Youth Center

With your fundraising help, each foster child will receive a letterhead, pen, pre-paid envelope, and stamps to write to their future family. Then, he/she will have the opportunity to introduce themselves in a short 2 minute video clip.

The clips will be posted on a website, so that families from anywhere in the world can be introduced to these marvelous young people. A separate section of the site will be designed so that families can request to receive a letter from any of the foster children. Once selected, we will mail the letters to the requesting families. Then, the families will have the opportunity to write a letter back.

Any family can request a copy of a letter from any of the children, and be able to write to them. Once we deliver the letters from these families to the children they will have what we will call a "partnering family".

The second half of the program will be with local middle and high schools. The objective is to foster mentorship and leadership in the community by those who are fortunate enough to learn valuable life lessons, and have the resources to work towards their dreams. 

These students will write a letter to their foster friends detailing what lessons come out of a friendship, how school has helped them become better people and communicators, and how they will help their new friends achieve success as well. These letters will then be given to the foster children, to which they will be able to write letters in response.

Eventually, LFA will coordinate a local interactive workshop wherein the students and foster children will work together on a personal project that will help the community. 

The theme of the project can be environmental, social, architectural, technological, artistic, musical, health-related, etc. 

With the help of local sponsors, a fundraising event will be held so that these new friends can showcase their work and talk about how their bond impacted each other's lives. The funds raised will go towards expanding LFA to more communities across the state, and hopefully the world.

To conclude, at one point or another we've all needed a little help with our dreams. It's in our nature to seek and give support. This is a chance for you to be a partner and leader in a movement that will close the widening gap of more and more children facing the world with a lack of support, love, and mentorship. 

It's time we share our vision for a more unified community. 

Thank you!

Risks and challenges

This program requires significant resources and commitment from friends and family to help make this a reality. A challenge we could face even after funding is lack of participation from foster homes, schools, and the global community to make this a success. This project won't be able to thrive unless we all want it to together. So, I hope that people do see the value that writing back can have on a child's life.