$10 Donation to Help Fund Memory Books for Foster Youth

The Issue: Foster Youth Without Connections to Their Past

Every day, young people age out of foster care in California, leaving their temporary homes at age 18 without having been reunified with their birth families or adopted. Many have spent their youth moving from home to home, never having a chance to form lasting adult relationships, so they are left alone to remember their past and plan for their future.

The Campaign: Providing Life Books for Foster Youth

If 17 people donate $10 to this Grassroots campaign, then Seneca Family of Agencies can fund life memory books for two youth in foster care enrolled in Seneca Center programs. Each additional $85 raised will fund a life book for another youth.

Therapeutic counselors work with youth in foster care, meeting weekly to discuss their interests, take pictures at their favorite sites, and interview people who are important in their lives. Youth then write down their memories and paste pictures of the people and places they love in a life book to document who they are and better retain their happy memories. Having scrapbooks to reflect on their past can help foster youth create a meaningful bond with their childhoods and give them a sense of identity and personal history, as well as a foundation from which to develop goals for the future.