We love it when our families get to go to an amazing and fun Halloween block party. Our Foster Fams with kids 4-12 got to kick off the spookiest night of the year at this free, family-friendly Carnival! They enjoyed games and arts & crafts and movies, too!
What a fun Street Party it was. We don’t have permission to use faces. Our silly face-blocking technique is in the spirit of the holiday! BOO and thank YOU!
Many thanks to Dewonnie Frederick for making sure our kids are always invited!
WE HAD SUCH A GREAT YEAR WE DIDN’T POST MUCH!
The winter took us to BAM film festival where we had 3 large groups of children and their caregivers enjoy awesome films! 
We applied for Corcoran Cares Grant in the winter and we got word in the summer that we will RECEIVE it in 2019! Thank you for Wendy Stark for helping us through the process. 
We took large groups to Teknopolis … 
…. Dance Africa …. (our children are not in these photos as we are not allowed to use them on our website! The photos you see on our website we take and cover their faces, or show others around them at an event, or get photos from the events themselves! This is just another reason our population is so invisible. It is considered illegal to use their likeness because their parents have not approved it and they are under 18 and are wards of the state. In other words the state is their parent and they will not approve them being used on the web. It is considered exploitation. So we do our best! News organizations do have exceptions…which is why the more news coverage #FOSTERCARE can get .. the better!) 
We also sent one emancipated student to a Cherry Lane theatre acting class! A small but powerful dream come true! THANKS for squeezing us in Reed! 🙂
This was just our first half of the year! Stay tuned for our second half.
Long gone are the stand-in-one-place-and-sing days. The Brooklyn Youth Chorus really wowed Foster Your Dream’s kids. So much so that the group-home that came for the first performance, inspired a second group to come listen! The young chorus and orchestra sung and played their hearts out and were theatrical, also.
There was choreography. There were visuals. There was harmony. There was diversity. There was a connection. Everything that music and art can do for the soul.
BAM is one of our biggest supporters. We had small groups go to many performances of the following BAM-tastic events …
The Toad Knew … a nonverbal rollicking event with acrobatics and water play and a LOT of stagecraft!
The Toad Knew
The Crown Heights film … based on a true story that some of our kids could relate to only too well!
Crown Heights Film and Real Life
A new year of Teknopolis Fun … we got to bring groups for both days.
Enjoying some virtual fun!
We always have a blast because BAM makes our groups feel free and joyful! Thanks, always, to Ms. D!
Sometimes the theatre things we rustle up are too “out there” for children who haven’t been exposed to much theatre. So when we approached The Children’s Center we asked the recreation director, Timothy Dugger, to keep an eye on BAM’s website and let us know if his children wanted to participate in something. He was excited about TEKNOPOLIS and we scored 12 tickets from Dewonnie Frederick!
Everyone had a blast and we poured a little science knowledge into our kids and got them out and about on a Saturday afternoon!
BAM and the Onassis Cultural Center New York presented The People Speak, gathering actors and musicians to bring to life Howard Zinn’s extraordinary history of ordinary people. With Staceyann Chin, Maggie Gyllenhaal, Talib Kweli, Deva Mahal, Aasif Mandvi, Frances McDormand, Peter Sarsgaard Stew, David Strathairn and Marisa Tomei among the performers, FYD jumped at the chance to attend.
As sometimes happens, a promise of 10 coming to the show only produced 2. But the story of the 2 is heartwarming and important.
This client who came and brought a friend, is an avid theatre goer and wishes to become an actor. We’ve known her for many years. She arrived and said to me “I emancipated today!” I said “Congratulations!” She said “Well, now I’m not sure!” We grabbed a burger and she told me the details (which I have changed to protect her identity).
She has been in a foster family in Queens and works in Queens. Her foster mother decided it was not a good fit (after many years) and ACS decided to move her 42 miles away to another foster home. She was so frustrated at being torn away from work and friends and ‘the system’ that she decided to emancipate herself then and there. She wasn’t even sure where she was going to sleep that night. Yet … she came to the theatre with a friend who had never been to the theatre.
There we sat the three of us and watched a stage full of artists perform empowering and wondrous speeches of resistance. The girls were enthralled. Afterwards we went to Dunkin Donuts, watched a drunken man pass out and the paramedics come and discussed how empowering the event was to them. They remembered and recounted many of the speeches and were wowed by the performances. I won’t go in to further details but this young woman is so inspiring to me. I hope that performers know that their efforts can often serve as salve against heartbreak which I saw it do with my own eyes that night. When a young person doesn’t even know where he/she will rest his/her head that night and still comes out to see some theatre, I bow down to the strength of all foster youths everywhere.