Cedar Rapids Elevate Chapter
Elevate is
- a support group for foster and adoptive teens
- an advocacy organization that has helped to pass laws to help foster and adopted youth and trained hundreds of social workers, foster parents, judges, attorneys and other adults on how to better work with teens in foster care
- a statewide organization with a local chapter in Cedar Rapids
2010 was our third year offering the Suitcase Project. Each year, we help more recipients than the year before and we attempt to partner with more community organizations and individuals who care about foster and adopted teens.
This year, we performed the suitcase project in 5 phases.
The application phase allows youth to complete a list of items they would like to receive for their first apartment. Youth had about a month in which to complete their applications from the date the applications were first made available.
The collection phase allowed donors to drop off new and gently used items at the Four Oaks Bridge and University of Iowa School of Social Work. This occurred over several weeks.
The sorting phase occurred on a Thursday night at an Elevate chapter meeting. A shopping list was then made of items that had not been received from the wish lists of the youth participating.
The next day we completed phase 3 - shopping. The shopping for this event took place at Wal-Mart because $250 in Wal-Mart cards were donated for this event.
On the Saturday of the same week, we completed phase 4, which was packing everything up by recipient and delivering the items.
In 2010, we partnered with
The University of Iowa School of Social Work
The Four Oaks Bridge
The Partnership for Safe Families/Transitioning Youth Initiative
Numerous individuals in the community
The CR NetWORK.
Donations included new and used household items, a laptop computer, money, gift cards and refreshments for the day the items were delivered.
Email: jackie_hammers@hotmail.com
