The transition to foster care for hundreds of Delaware children will be a little brighter thanks to the Kind to Kids Foundation and the work so many volunteers contributed at the My Blue Duffle Community Service Day on November 13th.
Since their founding in 2011, Kinds to Kids Foundation has supplied emergency care duffle bags for children entering foster care. But volunteer Meg Geisewite decided that the time was right to turn this effort into a communty-wide effort and came up with the idea to have party with parents and kids who helped fill duffle bags with children’s books and coloring books, socks, a toothbrush and toothpaste, a stuffed teddy bear, and a fluffy blanket that girls and moms made on Sunday afternoon in Hockessin. Attendees paid $25 each to attend the community service day.
One parent decided to have her daughter’s birthday party at the My Blue Duffle event. The birthday girl and 7 friends first dressed up in their PJ’s and enjoyed the 1/2 price pajama Sunday brunch at Buckley’s Tavern. When they arrived at the Hockessin Memorial Hall, they spread out at two tables gleefully cutting and adding trim to the colorful blankets. They also enjoyed the face painting and clown who made twisty animal balloons. They also enjoyed a kid-friendly buffet courtesy of the Platinum Dining Group.
“We are overwhelmed by the community support and were really surprised to sell out the week before the event,” said Geisewite. “This is really about bringing comfort — sometimes in the middle of the night — to kids going through a painful transition,” she said. Each month 40 children enter Delaware’s foster system, and there are 700 children in Delaware’s foster care system.
Many hands were involved with the Blue Duffle event including Meg Geisewite, Lisa Georigi, Racine Boyle, Jeanette DeBright, Michael Clemens, Rosemary Brooks, Alisha Bryson, Calisa Emerson, Dawn Manley, Michael Sullivan and students from the University of Delaware, Padua and Wilmington Charter School.
