Tuesday, July 13, 2004

By HELEN WARRINER
The Daily Astorian
hwarriner@dailyastorian.com

It Takes Effort To Make Kids Spin

LORI ASSA — The Daily Astorian

Kirstin Whitlock, a volunteer for Foster Club, helps set out 8,966 pinwheels on the beach in Seaside Friday afternoon. The colorful display represents the same number of foster children in Oregon.

SEASIDE — Rays of sun glint off metallic edges as a sea breeze spins the pinwheels around and around.

There are patriotic pinwheels with stars and stripes. Some are silver and dotted with red hearts, while others are blue with moons. There are neon green, sunshine yellow and rainbow pinwheels, all dancing merrily in the breeze.

Thousands of the spinning toys formed a pinwheel garden Friday on the beach in front of Seaside’s Turnaround – 8,966 of them, to be exact. They represented the 8,966 foster children in Oregon today. The pinwheel garden was part of Project Pinwheel, an event benefiting Foster Club, the Seaside-based, national nonprofit organization for children in foster care.

The metal pinwheels were auctioned during the program, to benefit Foster Club.

“Pinwheels are a youthful symbol,” said Meagan Tuhy, Foster Club marketing director. “And like it takes the wind to spin the pinwheel, it takes effort to make kids spin.”

Tools and resources
Bodner started Foster Club in 1999 as a way to help foster children from around the United States connect and talk about their situation. She and her husband are foster parents who welcomed two young boys into their home nine years ago.

For Bodner, becoming a foster parent was a whirlwind experience. She and her husband participated in training, attended specialized workshops and joined a foster parent support group. But she quickly realized that there was no information available to prepare the children she was welcoming into her home. So she started www.fosterclub.com, a Web site that allows foster youth to connect and gather information.

There are approximately 588,000 children in foster care in America. In Clatsop County, there are approximately 189 children in foster care, with 42 homes available to provide care.

Today, the club’s original simple Web site has evolved into three sites, with one for older foster youth and one for adults. It is the only organization of its nature in the country and has gained national recognition from other foster groups like the National Foster Parents Association and the Child Welfare League of America. The club also provides publications and sponsors events to help foster kids succeed.

One such event was the four-day teen conference held July 7-10 in cooperation with the Tongue Point Job Corps Center in Astoria. About 100 teens attended the conference, which helped prepare them for transition to a successful adulthood. At the same time, 125 state workers attended special training to learn more about working with teenagers in foster care.

“A lot of teens in foster care don’t have that support,” Bodner said. “They don’t have a place to go for the holidays. They don’t have a pantry to raid. At the conferences, we try to give them the tools they need to find resources.”

‘ You can do anything’
Sharde Armstrong of Indiana and Dozer Smith of Coos Bay know first-hand the challenges of growing up in foster care. Both entered the system at a young age and spent much of their childhoods and teen years in and out of foster homes.

Armstrong and Smith are two of six Foster Club All-Stars, a group of former foster youth participating in Foster Club’s summer internship program. The All-Stars share their experiences and advice at the Club’s teen conferences and helped plant the pinwheel garden Friday morning.

“I have a story and I can share it,” Armstrong said. “I try to tell teens not to be part of the stereotype of a foster kid. People think we’re idiotic delinquents. I’ve heard people say ‘you’re in foster care? You seem so intelligent.’ Sometimes you get ‘oh, what did you do?’ By having positive representatives of successful foster kids, it enables us to overcome stereotypes.”

Armstrong, 18, first entered foster care when she was 5 years old. Her mother is schizophrenic and her father was a drug addict. She remembers her first months in foster care.

“I was so sad and determined not to talk to my foster mom,” she said. “I felt like someone had stuck something in my heart. I felt very confused and I didn’t understand why I was being taken away from the parents I’d known.”

Since then, Armstrong has had more than 16 foster care placements and bounced back and forth between foster care and her birth parents. More than half of her foster homes were physically abusive, she said.

“It was hard, but I don’t wish I’d done something different. Each was a learning experience,” she said. “I’ve made a concentrated effort to move on. I tell other teens in foster care to be determined and do whatever you want to do. It doesn’t matter if you’re dirt poor or you don’t know who your parents are. You can do anything.”

Smith has a similar tale. The 19-year-old first entered foster care as a two-month-old infant after his mother “traded” him to his father, an alcoholic drug user. He also bounced back and forth between his father and more than 15 foster homes. Now a Nextel employee and a student at Southwestern Oregon Community College, he plans to study theater and geology. Armstrong has been accepted to Taylor University in Indiana, where she plans to major in psychology and eventually become a therapist for foster adolescents.

“It’s wonderful to be in control of my own life for the first time,” Smith said. “To be successful, you have to be positive, ask questions and take control of yourself.”

Club staff and volunteers hope that the All-Stars and events like Friday’s Project Pinwheel will help increase awareness about foster care. At a booth during the event, staff handed out information about becoming foster parents and other ways to help.

“At the very least, we want to get people to care,” Armstrong said.

Original Story at The Daily Astorian