Ode to Foster Daddies!

Fostering Faithfully’s largest initiative will always be our resource center, a hub of fostering activity and connection. If you have ever received something from the center, it is due to Lindsay Alexander’s vision for providing for foster kids since 2015. To say that she has put sweat equity into the foster closet over the years is an understatement! Lindsay is the center’s founder and current Director, who knew well as a foster parent herself, that a clothing closet was a necessity for fostering families accepting placements suddenly. The first days of a placement there is so much lost sleep, so many tears and appointments, so much holding and cuddling, a lot of life and home re-arranging to be done for the new family member, and so there is little time or energy to run all over town (usually with many kids) shopping for basics a child needs the next morning.

The clothing closet began with what Lindsay had to share: a utility/storage building outside of her daycare with no air conditioning and very little shelving. She started taking donations, finding folks to come help sort through them, hanging them up by sizes and seasons, and opening it up regularly to foster families who came knocking at all hours of the day and night. She often paid her own employees to go out and work for hours making it easier for foster parents to find what they need. It was a small place, but families found equipment, clothes, and shoes for foster children who came with nothing. Next, Safe House in Walhalla opened its doors to allow us to move our things there providing a large sorting table and much more space to line walls with clothes for all seasons and sort them by sizes. We also now had storage room for baby equipment, strollers, beds and cribs, bikes/toys, etc., and we still store them there! Lindsay worked hard to find groups to come help and to also buy shelves, containers, and whatever we needed to store and get organized, and Lindsay spent much of her own money setting things up.

Summer in the south made for some tough days on volunteers sorting and foster parents shopping with no air conditioning, so in 2017 we asked a local church if they would let us move in there. They said yes, and our new center was born at Bountyland Baptist Church serving 200 foster children in its first year! Still today, her business, Upstate Children’s Center, halls are typically lined with donations as she allows her business to be the drop-off spot for donations to Fostering Faithfully. She spends untold hours hauling donations, sorting, washing, arranging, keeping a log of what’s coming in and out, arranging groups to serve (and meeting them there), and meeting foster parents at all hours to ensure that kids have what they need! She often is found at Wal-mart buying car seats and cribs families need.

Fostering Faithfully’s name was chosen since God is the most faithful of all, and fostering requires much faith! Lindsay has been so faithful to serve families the past four years at the center, and I can’t wait to see what the future holds thanks to her vision for this kind of equipping for foster families and the kids they love. Her work has brought much joy to kids in crisis over the years. Thank you!