DCFYI

Thank you to everyone who sponsored, supported, and/or joined us for our Establishing Roots fundraiser!

What a fun evening - and our most successful to date, raising almost $61,000 that will allow Family & Youth Initiative to continue to expand and serve more teens in the coming year.

We are especially grateful to the wonderful companies and individuals who served as sponsors for this event and to the generous restaurants that provided a "taste" of their menus.. Thank you!

DCFYI was truly blessed this past weekend to be one of Stone Soup Films' Doc in a Day mini-documentary subjects.  We were selected a while ago. The filming happened Saturday, with the videographers/documentarians spending time at the Barracks Row Festival, where DCFYI had a booth, and at an event afterwards with our teens.  Executive Director Susan Punnett spoke about the program and the teens, as did long-time volunteer, mentor, and host parent Sarah Buckbee, and an adoptive mom: me!

Summer family vacations are the best. It is a time to have fun, bond with family, and enjoy the beach / outdoors. Unfortunately, I didn't get to experience many family vacations growing up as a foster care youth. My foster parents did not take me, the foster child, along for family vacations. Instead I was placed in another foster home to wait for their return. It certainly sent a horrible message to me as a child that in many ways I was not a part of the family. Otherwise, I'd be at the beach too.