This year, we are thrilled to introduce you to the Heart Gallery of Tampa. You may recognize their name because of the art gallery style displays of professionally photographed Foster Children at your favorite shopping mall. The Heart Gallery has been a tireless advocate for Foster Children using not only this method but many other innovative techniques to find these children their forever home. Their ultimate goal is to move Foster Children to adoption and provide them with a loving, safe and secure future. Forever.

We have been proud to work with Heart Gallery of Tampa for a few years, and we have been thrilled with the results that they have achieved with the resources that we have provided!

When we began working with them in 2021, they had a total of 10 adoptions for the year. Since then, they have increased to 32 adoptions in 2022 and 35 in 2023! They have also seen a 50% decrease in the number of days a child spends waiting for a forever family once they are placed in the Heart Gallery program. They are currently serving 110-125 children per year in their program.

Many of these children have been in foster care for over 7 years, some being placed in over 40 different foster homes. After seeing what the Heart Gallery has accomplished with our assistance, we couldn’t help but wonder what they could do if we increased that help and made them the recipient of this year’s Fund A Need.

The State of Florida currently has over 25,000 children in Foster Care.  Over 600,000 throughout the US. Almost 50% are 5 or younger. 

Approximately 6 percent of all children in the U.S. will find themselves in the foster care system before they turn 18. 

The most recent statistics show that 9% of children age out of the Foster system annually at 18 years old, and a majority left without the emotional and financial support necessary to succeed in life that other children can receive within a family.  Nearly 25% of youth aging out did not have a high school diploma.

By the time foster youth are 24, only half of them will have stable and steady employment. The same percentage develop substance abuse.

Compared to their peers, male former foster youth are four times as likely to commit a crime. Females are 10 times more likely.