Project 6 - Children's Advocacy Center

We have recently discovered The Children's Advocacy Center. They help with counselling and services for  children who have been victims of abuse. The best way to describe what they do for our area children is to use their own words.


" The Children's Advocacy Center opened it's doors on Jun 1, 2001 to provide services to children in Erie County who have made allegations of sexual or physical abuse.  Referrals to the CAC primarily come from the Office of Children and Youth and from the police.  Children are interviewed at the Center in a child-friendly environment. "


Many parties are involved when a child reports abuse. The CAC provides a child-friendly, central location for interviews and counselling to take place.  This eases the trauma on the children, and their families, as investigations and healing begin.


We have been in touch with one of the board members to find out the needs for the center and the children they are servicing.  The first response was stuffed animals with the tags still attached.  After the interviews are conducted the children are then allowed to pick out a new buddy to take home with them.  As little as this might sound to you or I, for some of these children this is the only thing they might have.  This stands especially true if they are coming from OCY and have just entered the foster care system. This buddy can help provide comfort during a pretty stressful time.

So, friends, that is our next mission.  We are asking for your help in stocking The CAC with new stuffed animals, tags still attached, to give to the children visiting their offices.

We will soon be announcing drop off dates and locations, but as always you can contact us personally and we will come pick up the buddies from you.  Just remember that they have to be new with tags still attached or The CAC will not be able to accept them.  Thanks in advance as we get Project #6 underway.



Lisa and Clarissa

School Supply Delivery!

 Yesterday we sorted through all of the school supplies that you donated to 

Community Shelter Services and got them where they needed to be.  

How awesome to think about the kids whose families need a little help 

getting their hands on pencils and notebooks and folders to start the year! 

 Check out all those folders!

 Need a pencil?

 Counting backpacks...

Getting the totals together.

Several of you took your donations directly to Community Shelter Services. 

We also will have a second batch of your donations to take in the next few days. 

This means that the numbers here are not complete, 

but we wanted to give you an idea of what we did together. 

 Today we donated a total of 620 different school supplies on YOUR behalf, 

which includes 212 pencils, 37 notebooks, 10 bookbags, and lots of folders, erasers, and glue sticks.

Thank you for all your help making the school year start a little brighter for some 

of our community's families.

Project #5 - Back to School

Hello, Friends!

We did our first project together a year ago now.  We have done a lot as a community and for our community this past year.  It is so exciting to imagine what our next year will bring.

Project 5 brings us full circle.  We are going Back to School again!

With your help, we are going to help families in need provide school supplies to their children as they start off the school year.  We all know how long the list of things we need for our children to either bring to school, or to do studying and homework outside of school.

Your donations will be given to Community Shelter Services, an agency that provides shelter and services to area men, women, and children in need,  in support of their Back to School Program. We can play a role to help children have a successful school year, when their lives are in turmoil.

What we are asking is for all of you to pick up a few things while you are doing your shopping.  Backpacks, notebooks, pencils, glue sticks... anything a child can use for school.  We will set up a few drop off dates in the near future, or you can contact us through here and we will meet to pick them up from you.

Here's a complete list of needs from Community Shelter Services:

backpacks
3 ring binders
pencils
glue sticks
crayons
erasers
scissors
two pocket folders
spiral notebooks
colored pencils
plastic pencil cases
rulers
loose leaf notebook paper
packaged notebook dividers
pens
highlighters
black Sharpie markers
pencil sharpeners
small sticky notes
lined notecards
colored markers ~ thin or wide

Thank you all for the awesomeness that is to come!

~Clarissa and Lisa

Building a Library

We are sorry that we have been a little absent this past month (job situations changed for the both of us and the like).  But we are back and ready for action!

Please allow us to remind you of what we are putting together for Project #4.

Our friend, Missy, works with the children who stay at The Refuge, which is a local shelter that houses families in need.  When she was trying to encourage her kids to read, she realized that most of their disinterest was because of the shelter's lack of quality books.

And we can do something about that!  With your help, we will build a great library for the shelter.

Stay tuned for a Drop Off date to be set in the next few days.  Or if you have books ready let us know (soulpurpose.erie@gmail.com) and we will figure out a time to catch up with you!

Let's collect some books for the children at The Refuge!!!

Announcing Project 4!

Do your children have books that they love to hear over and over?  Have they ever gotten lost in a story?  Do you have warm memories of reading to your children, and of them starting to read books themselves?

The goal of our next project is to help provide all of those things to families living at The Refuge, a local shelter that provides a safe place to stay for families in need.  

Missy, who is in charge of the youth programs at The Refuge, has been wanting to start a reading program for the kids she works with there.  However, she has some difficulties getting the kids interested and quickly realized the problem.

Most of the books that Missy has available to her are terribly outdated and completely uninteresting to the kids. The stories and illustrations are not captivating to the youngest children. The selection of chapter books and young adult books is even more limited, to say the least.

Let's work together to give the kids staying at The Refuge some great stories to get lost in. Let's help the parents staying their with their children have some quality books to read to their kids at night.  

We will keep you posted about collection locations and drop off dates in the coming days, but for the moment, see what you can start to gather up.  

Get excited to share the love of a good story with kids and young adults who really need it!

Goal #1 - ACCOMPLISHED!

It is actually a lot more accurate to say that you blew Goal #1 away!  

The first milestone we were aiming for was to be able to deliver 25 bags, each with a blanket and stuffed buddy, to OCY, to gift to a child as they were forced to enter the foster care system.

We were thrilled with the donations we started to receive.  

These fun guys even came to us from across the country!

Then we gathered everything together so we could start to assemble bags.

Can you believe this!?

Once all buddies and blankets were tucked safely inside a tote bag or back pack...

... it became very clear that you had bigger goals for the children of Erie than we did!  You helped us put together 67 bags.  SIXTY-SEVEN!  That is absolutely amazing and humbling.

We are taking YOUR gifts to OCY this afternoon.  

Thank you for the blessings you are passing along on your behalf.  

In Kristy's Words...

Kristy, our friend who inspired us to reach out to children in the foster care system, wrote on her blog, Waiting For Happy, today about her family's experience in caring for the children who have come to them.  We wanted to share some of her words with you.  They touched our hearts.

~~~~~~

"We are not the same people today that we were just a few months ago. Today, we live with not just the awareness, but the intimate knowledge that not all children are fed, loved and cared for the way children should be. We have always known that this is the reality but now our eyes have truly been opened and we cannot look away. Once you’ve seen the face of abuse so horrific you’re sure you yourself wouldn’t have survived it, or have held a tiny child who has not had even some of their most basic needs met let alone been appropriately interacted with, you cannot turn back. It burns in your heart and in your mind. 

Our family has been blessed to be able to love and hold a few children in our three months since we’ve been licensed and our lives have been forever changed by them. Survivors in their own right, these kids are absolute miracles, but nobody has told them that. We get to. We get to love them and feed them and rock them to sleep at night assuring them that they are safe and secure and the next meal is sure to be served. 

Each child comes with a different story…a different reality and no two seem to be just alike. We’ve had four children placed in our home over the past four months and one common thread has been woven through each one and been a real eye opener to our privileged family. Each of these kids has come with little more than the clothes on their very back. Often times those clothes don’t even fit and sometimes they aren’t even weather appropriate. Taken from everything they know and love, they don’t even have a blankey or a trusted snuggly friend to join them on their journey that they didn’t ask to be on. 

It has been overwhelmingly heartwarming though to see that with each child who has walked or been carried through our door, the outpouring of love we’ve seen from friends and family. Not everyone can open their home (though I’d encourage you to really think and pray on that) but we all need to open our hearts to these kids and from our experience folks are eager to do so, they just don’t quite know how to help. I am here to tell you that something as simple as providing these sweet ones with just a little something to call their own, can make a difference. I have had the honor of being able to hand a four year old his very first stuffed animal and a five year old girl her first doll and I am here to tell you they are moments I will never forget. I’ve given my own children plenty of gifts, yet giving to a child who truly has nothing is an experience everyone should know."

~~~~~~~~~

Thank you, Kristy, for sharing this.