Aged Out-Kicked Out in Top 25!
I’m delighted to announce that "Aged out-Kicked out" has made it to the Top 25 in The Members Project competition! If it makes it to the Top 5, this could mean enormous exposure for the plight of former foster youth in America. The winner of The Members Project will get $1 million to $5 million in funding. Please vote by Sunday, July 22 (remember, you must be an eligible card-holder).
As I’ve written frequently, it takes about $15,000 per youth, per year, to provide housing, job-readiness training, education, counseling and life skills training. And within two years, the result is a self-sufficient individual, with at least a high school diploma or GED, who is able to live independently and productively within the community. Without help in the first 18 months out of the foster care system, the result is incarceration, homelessness, institutionalization, pregnancy, and substance abuse. The cost of that? Hundreds of thousands of dollars, per person, per lifetime.
If you’re looking for a cost-effective giving idea that will prevent homelessness (3 of 10 homeless people have a foster care history) and activities that lead to incarceration (and even death!), the cause of youth who are aging out is the one.
Check out the project with the most votes: it’s a Procter & Gamble for clean water. Now, I’m all for clean water in developing nations, but should a project of a huge, for profit corporation, be (extra)funded by another huge corporation? When I think about advocacy and grassroots activism (which I thought this competition was supposed to be about—regular people in the community who had ideas of ways to help the world), I don’t think Procter & Gamble. (Not to mention their animal experimentation doesn’t give me the warm fuzzies.) There’s also a project to produce bees (cause, you know, they’re a renewable resource) in light of the recent colony collapse. ‘Doesn’t exactly have vegan written all over it.
Voting for a Members Project is a form of activism. Check out the projects, read about the people and organizations behind the projects, and cast your vote that will help change one small part of the world.
