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Support for
Pennsylvania
Adoptive & Foster Families

Taproot issue 47 - June 2004

Presidents Corner

This has been a very busy past few months. As most of you already know I love talking and being with people. In April of this year The Collaboration to AdoptUsKids asked if I would like to do some training for them across the states. Of course I said yes. I met so many neat people during my travels. I also had the opportunity to meet and co-train with two great ladies, Mary Brooks and Mary Lou Edgar. Thanks Mary Lou for making it fun!

Keep your eyes and ears open for the launch of the AdoptUsKids media campaign. You will soon see commercials about adoption and foster care. They will be on the radio, in the newspapers and on the Internet.

May was Foster Care Month, to help bring attention to the waiting children in Pennsylvania, TAP hosted a garage/bake sale. It was a huge success! We not only made over $500, we passed out information and talked with many, many families about adoption. I would like to say thank you to all the families that worked so hard to make this happen. The night before the sale some families drove all the way from Philadelphia to help tag and sort clothes (what a job). I think we decided to call it quits around 10:30 that night. Most of those same families were at my home at 6:30 the next morning setting up for the sale. It was great fun; we had face painters and a belly bounce for the kids, Jeff made great hamburgers and hot dogs for the adults, and the Lord held off the rain. I would also like to thank all of you who donated things to be sold. We had SO much “stuff”. Anything that was left over we took to the Salvation Army, a homeless shelter and to a Pregnancy Crisis Center. See you next year for our second one.

We will NOT have a parent group meeting in June. I will be out of town, Andrea has a family commitment, but worst of all, the lady in charge of our children ages 8 and above (the largest group) had surgery last week. I will see you all July 17 th for our annual picnic. It will be held at my home from 12:00 until 4:00.

Our next regular meeting will be September 25 th. The topic will be Attachment in Adoption and the speaker will be Kathy Boyd, Chester County C&Y. We will be holding our annual Adoption, Foster care and Kinship conference in Philadelphia on November 13 th.

Don’t forget that we are collecting new and used (in GOOD condition) children’s books over the summer. In September we will take them to a school in Philadelphia that does not have a library. Midge Price is heading up this project. If you would like more information about it call TAP and I will give you Meg’s telephone number. This is a good summer project to get your children involved in.

In closing I would like to say congratulations to my son Joshua and to Andrea’s son Matthew. They both graduated from college in May. Joshua was placed with us when he was 13 months old. Some of you met Josh when he told his story at one of our parent group meetings. We are proud of both of you!

I hope to see all of you at the July picnic.

Phyllis