heart gallery of pinellas and pasco

Heart Gallery of Pinellas and Pasco

Ron Favali, Board Member

• The mission of the Heart Gallery of Pinellas and Pasco is to increase the number of successful adoptions of local children in foster care.

• In addition to featuring children, we recruit and support families interested in adoption.

• There are approximately 3000 kids in Tampa Bay living in foster care.

Shall we play a game?

This is audience participation

Give me one word to describe the following kids.

These are all children who live, or have lived, in foster care in Pinellas and Pasco.

What did you get on your 18th birthday?

What do kids in living in foster care get for their 18th Birthday?

Every resource they have ever known is taken away.

They “age out.”

Every year 24,000 children living in foster care turn 18 and “age out” of the system.

What happens to them?

• Most are put into the world without their own housing, financial support, or emotional support.

• Many become homeless.

• Less than 3% will earn a college degree.

• 38% have emotional problems.

• 50% use illegal drugs.

• 25% involved with legal system.

• Only 48% will graduate high school.

For every child who ages out of foster care, You, the taxpayer, pays an average of $300,000 in social costs.

• Incarceration

• Public assistance

• Lost wages

$8 billion social costs every year

• Since its inception in 2006, The Heart Gallery of Pinellas and Pasco has matched nearly 300 kids living in foster care with their “forever families.”

• We are about to celebrate our 10 year anniversary.

How can you help?

• $500 – the cost of a professionally shot and edited video of one of our waiting children.

• $1000 – covers all costs of hosting and maintaining our physical gallery for a year.

• $3000 covers all cost for for pre- and post-Adoption Support Service for one year.

Other ways you can help

• Host the physical gallery.

• Attend/Sponsor “Celebrate Me Home” this may at Tropicana Field.

• Help us spread the word.

• Follow us

– @theheartgallery

– Heart Galley of Pinellas and Pasco