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Budget cuts prompt need for donations
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If you are a parent you understand how expensive it is to keep your child in clothes that fit. Kids grow fast, and keeping up with that can cost a pretty penny. You, as a parent, also know how important clothes are to children. They make a statement, allow them to fit in with their peers and often what a child wears can give them a boost in self esteem. Now imagine keeping your child in decent well fitting clothes for roughly twelve dollars a month. Most of us would throw in the towel and say it can’t be done. Yet that is what Arizona’s foster parents are expected to do.
This year the Mesa United Way partnered with the East Valley Tribune will host a two month campaign (June and July) to raise funds for children in the East Valley. The goal is to raise $15,000 by July 31. With the economic down turn and budget cuts made to the foster care programs, the focus of this drive will be “basic needs,” food, shelter and clothing. In 2003 there were 7,000 children in state custody, currently there are 11,000 and the state budget can’t keep up. That is why donations are so desperately needed.
The Tribune reports, “There are currently no clothing banks in the East Valley for foster children. The nearest bank for Child Protective Services is in the West Valley. The Mesa United Way is planning on opening a clothing bank in Mesa sometime in July that would be open to group homes and foster families. Those plans are still a work in progress.”
Today it is hard enough to be a kid, but to be a kid who is at the mercy of an inadequate state budget, or who must depend on the “kindness of strangers” only magnifies those difficulties. If a new outfit can give a child a well deserved dose of pride and self esteem, we as a community all benefit. Today we have an opportunity to positively affect the life of a child, what greater gift is there than that?
“If the American way of life fails the child, it fails us all.” Pearl S. Buck
To donate:www.evtrib.com and click on Our Children Matter logo
Or, go to www.ourchildrenmatter.org
For information call, (480) 969-8601 or e-mail donations @unitedway.org
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