NORWAY – During April, depending on where you go, you’ll see the faces of many children peering out from posters, faces asking for a moment of attention, and then, if you look a little longer, for you to share your home and life with them.
A Family for ME, a statewide organization based in Gardiner that recruits adoptive and foster families, is partnering with the Norway-Paris Kiwanis Club to bring attention to kids who need new parents. They will put 168 posters of Maine children who are up for adoption in businesses around Oxford Hills.
A few samples of the types of posters that will be displayed are on the Web site, www.afamilyforme.org/heart. They include a photographic portrait of the child, with some details about hobbies and personality traits.
“Some people, we’ve been told, say, I saw this picture, and I just knew this child was for me.’ They get this sense that yes, that’s the child I’d like to have,'” Joan Doucette of A Family for ME, said Friday.
A Family For ME is a Department of Health and Human Services program, with a goal to reduce the number of children available for adoption in Maine. Doucette said that around 200 kids in Maine need new homes, and that this poster project – called the Heart Gallery – has helped reduce that number in the past three years.
Since 2003, the Heart Gallery has been set up in Waterville, Rockland, Saco, Houlton and Fort Fairfield.
Phil Dubois, secretary of the Kiwanis Club, asked A Family for ME to launch the Heart Gallery in this area, partly because this issue is close to him. He and his wife are in the process of adopting an 11-year-old boy.
Dubois said Friday that the poster project is intended to blitz this community for one month and raise awareness. “A lot of people say, I’ve thought about that.’ A lot of people have given it a cursory thought but haven’t followed through,” he said.
Also, if there are more foster or adoptive homes in this area, there will be a greater likelihood that a local child in need of a home will have a shot at staying close to his or her hometown, Dubois said.
Dubois is hoping many businesses in the area will participate, especially ones with high traffic. He will also posters up in town offices, libraries and schools.
In May, after the project is through, those who have expressed an interest in adoption or foster care will be invited to attend an informational meeting to learn about the adoption process in greater depth, Dubois said.
“It is low cost,” he said, about the posters. “And I hope it reinforces for people as they go through one business to another – repetition will be the key – and enforces that there is a huge need for foster homes.”
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