Supporting Our Community Together

Chosen for Life Ministries exists to educate and equip local churches and communities to care well for orphaned and vulnerable children. We love connecting local churches and community organizations to ways that they can tangibly serve children and families! As needs arise in our area, we continue to see others step up in big ways to serve with love and generosity. Just recently, we have been astounded by the community support that we have seen offered not only to families but to caseworkers and organizations who are working to help children have safe, loving homes and permanency!

APPRECIATING LOCAL CASEWORKERS

Thanks to the Creature Comforts Get Comfortable Campaign, CFLM was able to deliver gifts of appreciation to 60 caseworkers at Clarke County DFCS! Creature Comforts hosted Chosen for Life during February as one of their Get Comfortable Partners. During the event, people could write encouraging cards to caseworkers, package gifts of candy and a Chick-fil-A gift card, and even make care packages for children in foster care that consisted of books, stuffed animals, and new, unused socks, underwear, and pajamas!

Chosen for Life staff visited the Clarke DFCS office to deliver these gifts, and the gratitude was incredible! Caseworkers work daily to help our state's most vulnerable children have safety, love, and permanency. Their jobs are not easy jobs, and they need encouragement as they face difficult circumstances every single day. We love equipping the community to step into this space and encourage individuals who give so much of themselves for the sake of others! Thank you Creature Comforts and Athens, GA for playing such a valuable role!

 

CONNECTING RESOURCES TO MEET NEEDS

Our community has so much to offer to children and families whenever needs become known! We have seen just how generous our community is through the many donations of high quality children's clothing and other care items that we have received in our Free Clothes Closet for Foster Families. We continually meet foster families as well as biological parents of children who are in foster care as they visit our Clothes Closet for the items they need to care well for the children in their homes! One of the greatest joys we have is seeing so many people in our community give generously so that children experience the sweet gifts of items they are in need of! When families tell CFLM of a need they have, we are able to reach out to our network of churches and community members to find the items they need, if we do not have that item already in our Clothes Closet. Here are just a few examples of how CFLM has been able to equip our community to serve families well by providing for their tangible needs:

  • A toddler bed was donated to a foster family so that they could say "Yes" to a little boy who was entering foster care and in need of a safe, loving family.
  • A single bed was donated to the biological parent of a child in foster care so that their sons and daughter could come back home and be reunified with their family!
  • Someone in the community had a basketball goal they were looking to donate, and a Care Team Leader picked it up and delivered it to a foster family so their two teenage foster children could have a fun avenue to play and hang out with their mentors!

COMING TOGETHER TO SUPPORT EACH OTHER

Chosen for Life Ministries is a part of the Home in 5 network, which is a public-private partnership to increase foster care awareness, foster homes, and support in Region 5. Home in 5 creates beautiful ways of raising awareness of the need for more foster homes in the region in order to recruit more foster families to open their homes to vulnerable children. One festive way they are raising awareness is by providing churches with easter eggs for their community easter egg hunts! Each egg includes delicious candy and a flyer explaining the foster care crisis and need for more foster families.

As they started preparing these easter eggs, they realized it was bigger than a 3 person job! They reached out to Chosen for Life Ministries to ask for help stuffing these eggs to get them ready to deliver to local churches. Five different church and community organizations immediately stepped up and offered to have their children's ministry and small groups put together these eggs!

 

Thanks to Athens Church, Jefferson Parks and Recreation After School Program, Life Church of Athens KidzLife Program, Watkinsville First Baptist Church, and other community groups over 1,000 were stuffed in just one day! Here is what Home in 5 had to say to the support they were given:

After HOURS of egg stuffing without making a dent we waived the white flag and our rescue ship showed up! We ❤️  Chosen for Life Ministries and the community in Region V who give their time so selflessly and consistently to support our effort!

These are only a few of the amazing stories that we see as we work to equip churches and communities to care well for orphaned and vulnerable children. There are many roles that we can all play to show children and families the love and support that they need, and we want to always help you find the role that you can play! It is a joy to see so many within our community find fun and unique ways to be a part of this work, and we cannot say thank you enough to all those who are taking the step to find the role that they can play!

If you want to find your role today, visit our website to learn more about how to be involved!

Chosen for Life