In an effort to collect money for foster children, Thea Roy (11), Lauren Kadlubowski (12), Sarah Shaw (12), and Nicole Gordon Tsantsaridi (12) brought eight white boxes to various sites on campus, May 4. The fundraising project was initially an advocacy assignment for their Sociology & Law in Action class; however, after learning more about the severe challenges in foster children’s lives, it has gone beyond an assignment and has become a self-driven project.  

“The funding will help because it can be put into programs that help [foster children’s] mental health so they don’t enter adulthood with behavioral or educational issues,” Roy said. “Also, foster care kids can get kicked out of the system at 18, and with poor education and little money, they have nowhere to go and can become homeless. Our money could help 18 year olds go to college.” 

More than 3,000 children are in the foster care system in San Diego, many of whom come from abusive and neglectful homes. The four students teamed up with the nonprofit organization Promises2Kids to provide children in the foster care system with opportunities and guidance such as therapy, mentoring programs, and dance and art classes.

Although Promises2Kids is a new partner for the group of students, Shaw has experience working with foster children from spending the last two summers at the Royal Family KIDS Camp: a five-day experience for children who have experienced relational trauma. These children often need help to heal after suffering abuse, neglect, or other circumstances within their families that brought them into foster care. The training Shaw went through to work as a staff member at the camp gave her a deeper understanding of the challenges in a foster child’s life and inspired her Sociology & Law in Action project plan. 

“[Royal Family KIDS Camp] taught me more about how children work psychologically,” Shaw said. “Because [foster youth] have these troubled backgrounds, their minds work differently and you have to deal with them differently than you normally would. [In the Sociology & Law in Action class,] we have the advocacy project where we have to pick an issue, research about it, and create some sort of plan or solution to help the problem. The first thing that came to my mind was helping foster kids because I have experience with that.”

The student group couldn’t tape posters around the school or collect money in the plaza if it was being donated to outside organizations due to school regulations. Still, they could carry out their plan by relying on cooperation with their teachers to share donation boxes with the students. 

The donation boxes are scattered around campus and can be spotted in the library, the band room, Jim Jennings’s classroom, Laura Cox’s classroom, Elizabeth Main’s classroom, David Barboza’s classroom, Keith Opstad’s classroom, and Ann Lemersal’s classroom. As of May 25, $315.22 were donated to the Promises2Kids foster care organization, $170.22 of which are from the school donation boxes, and the rest from the GoFundMe virtual fundraiser that the students set up. 

The project will continue until the end of the school year and its success inspired Roy, the only one of the four not graduating in 2023, to plan more for the coming school year.  

“I think I’m going to keep up the GoFundMe,” Roy said. “I’ll make a few more boxes and keep the ones I already have, then figure out how to advertise it more.”

Roy said that knowing she can help the life of even one foster child is inspiring in itself, which is enough motivation to continue the donations independently until she graduates.

“I just don’t think it’s fair that they don’t get to have childhoods or live their teenage years out just because their parents turned out to suck,” Roy said. “I want to do whatever I can to help. I know I can’t change the world or the whole system, but I know I can change even one kid’s world, and that’s enough for me.”