Pub. 2 2020 Issue 1

Enter The Forgotten Initiative and their “Emergency Kit Project”! The Forgotten Initiative • Their mission is to support the foster care community through awareness, encouragement and advocacy. • They recognize that every member of the foster care community matters; agency workers, foster parents, vulner- able adults and children. • You can find out more about The For- gotten Initiative at www.theforgottenini- tiative.org or by checking out their local branch on Facebook at Concord, NH: The Forgotten Initiative Have you ever thought about the children out there in foster care but weren’t sure there was anything you could do to help other than actually foster a child? Well, there is so much more we all can do to help and support the foster care community. Recently Shawna Tinkham and I had the pleasure to meet with the local contact for the Forgotten Initiative for Concord, NH We had a great meeting; we heard stories and statistics that were beyond what we could have ever imagined, and by the end all we could say was, “How can the NHADA staff help?” The “Emergency Kit Project” If we jump back a moment to our police officer and their sudden need to care for a small child, what if they had a shoe box sized container in their cruiser with a little bit of everything they would need to care for that child? The Forgotten Initiative came up with the Emergency Kit idea; in it are a couple of diapers and some wipes, a bottle and a sippy cup, juice mix, snacks, bubbles, crayons, a coloring book, play dough as well as other small items that would be helpful if someone had to suddenly care for a small child. In our meeting with the Forgotten Initiative we learned of the Con- cord Police Department's request to them for Emergency Kits for all their vehicles. NHADA staff has agreed to help with this request and our goal is to make 100 of these kits to present to the Concord Police Department! We have all been very busy shopping, collecting items and donations, and soon we will be working together to build the kits. In January, we will be having a staff lunch and learn with the local For- gotten Initiative representative speaking and during the presentation we will be presenting the Concord Police Department with the 100 kits! Over the years NHADA staff has taken on many projects to, as we say, “Do Good.” We have donated hundreds of pounds of food to the NH Food Bank, we made over 100 backpacks for children in need at back to school time, we collected winter coats for those in need, we have donated time out of work to charities and projects of our choosing, and collected hundreds of toys for the Toys for Tots campaign, just to name some of our projects. This year we are happy to add The Forgotten Ini- tiative to our list and we encourage our members to look into them and see if there is a way for you to help them as well. Coming together as a staff to “Do Good” is really a great feeling and to know what you set out to accomplish will help so many is very rewarding. Stay tuned; we will share photos and more information when we present our final project! Continued from Page 19 N E W H A M P S H I R E 21