2024 was a special year for Kidsave as we celebrated our 25th anniversary as an organization. While so much has changed and evolved since our launch in 1999, one thing has remained the same: our dedication to helping older youth in foster care and orphanages find the love and support they need.
Here’s a look at what each of our programs accomplished over the last year.
Kidsave’s Weekend Miracles program connects local youth in foster care with loving families in their communities for mentoring, hosting, and adoption. This program operates in Los Angeles, Houston, and, as of 2024, Virginia. In total, the Weekend Miracles program served 142 kids and celebrated three adoptions.
In Los Angeles, our Weekend Miracles program served 79 kids. We celebrated one completed adoption and 16 adoptive matches.
In early 2024, we celebrated the adoption of 13-year-old Luna. Luna first met Stuart and Sydney Snyder-Gibbs in the fall of 2022 at Kidsave’s annual Hike With Your Heart event. The three immediately hit it off and continued getting to know each other through monthly Weekend Miracles events. When Luna had a sudden placement change, the three were out of contact for a bit, but Sydney and Stuart were persistent. Luna’s social worker helped them reconnect, and Luna was able to move in with them very soon after. In 2024, not long after Luna’s 13th birthday, her adoption was finalized, and the Snyder-Gibbs family couldn’t be happier.
In Houston, our Weekend Miracles program served 61 kids and celebrated two completed adoptions and four adoptive matches.
In addition to finalized adoptions, a major part of our Weekend Miracles program is hosting. When a child meets and connects with an adult or family through the program, they build their relationship naturally by spending time together at Connection Events, and eventually, one-on-one visits. After they have established a bond, the child and family can move on to hosting. A host is a super mentor who commits to spending at least two weekends a month with their host child. In some cases, kids move in with their hosts, and in others, they remain with their foster family but spend weekend visits with their hosts.
Future Johns has hosted 16-year-old Briana for two years now. Future and Briana met at a Weekend Miracles event in Houston during the summer of 2021. They got to know each other gradually, spending time together at Connection Events, and soon, Future began driving Briana from her foster home to the events.
Future recalls fondly the rides to and from a Houston Astros game in 2022. “We went to the Astros game and then I was able to take her home, but we were able to spend that time together outside of the normal Kidsave event and outside of just transporting them to the Kidsave event,” she said. “It was just us together at a game, and we were able to really spend some time together. And I was like, ‘Ok, this is going to work. I can do this.’”
After nearly three years of hosting, Future has seen Briana through some tough times. And for Briana, a child in foster care whose life is often filled with uncertainty, Future has become a constant presence and a source of stability.
Learn how you can become a mentor or host through Kidsave.
In 2024, we officially expanded our Weekend Miracles program into the Commonwealth of Virginia. Thanks to a partnership with Virginia Department of Social Services, Kidsave now serves older youth in care in Central and Northern Virginia. We had our inaugural event in Spotsylvania in December 2024 and served two kids and three families.
Kidsave’s Summer Miracles program connects older orphans from Colombia (ages 9-16) with adoptive families here in the United States. The youth stay with host families for five weeks in the summer (three weeks in the winter) and learn about life in the U.S., experience living with an American family, and most importantly, connect with potential adoptive families. This year, the Summer Miracles program served 38 kids, all but one of whom were new to the program.
So far, of the 37 kids served, 19 have found families, with two additional matches pending. If children do not initially connect with an adoptive family during the hosting period, they can return the following year.
The EMBRACE Project is an exciting Kidsave initiative to close the gap for Black youth in foster care. Black youth are overrepresented in foster care (making up only 13% of the total child population but 23% of youth in foster care) and underrepresented in rates of adoption (making up 21% of youth waiting to be adopted but only 16% of youth adopted annually).
In 2024, the EMBRACE Project published a report analyzing interviews with 50 Black adults regarding foster care and adoption. We examined how proximity to foster care and adoption and personal lived experiences can shape perceptions and openness to engaging with foster care and adoption.
We also published secondary analysis reports from the 2023 Kidsave-Gallup study focused on survey responses from adults in California and Texas, the LGBT community, and the Hispanic/Latinx community.
In coordination with our Weekend Miracles program, we launched Cultural Responsiveness training for all new Kidsave families.
EMBRACE leaders were published in several media outlets in 2024, notably:
- DeJuana Jernigan, a member of the EMBRACE Task Force and CEO of Arms Wide in Houston was published in the Austin American Statesman with her op-ed Foster Care's One-Size-Fits-All Doesn't Work, Especially with Black Children.
- Kidsave dad Calvin Dyson was published in the Advocate with his op-ed Breaking Stereotypes and Building Futures as a Black Gay Dad.
- Darrell Booker, EMBRACE Task Force Member and X at Microsoft, hosted a discussion on LinkedIn on how the foster care system and emerging technology can work together to improve outcomes. Watch it here: Innovation in Foster Care: How Technology is Driving Equity.
- And our EMBRACE team lead, Shantay Armstrong, was published in the Los Angeles Times: How to Prevent Black Kids from Getting Stuck in Foster Care.
Support EMBRACE's work on behalf of youth of color and marginalized groups in foster care.
Life in Ukraine has been difficult since the war broke out in February 2022. Our team there has faced many challenges, but our resolve has never wavered. 2024 was another incredible year of resilience, courage, and making strides even in the face of adversity. In the summer of 2024, after two long years of hard work, we opened the Kidsave Miracles Center.
The Miracles Center, tucked in the mountains of western Ukraine, serves as a safe haven where orphans and children in foster care can find much-needed respite from the traumas of war. While staying at the Center, kids can participate in group and individual therapy sessions with trauma-trained counselors, reconnect with their childhood by playing on the playground and soccer field, and participate in life-skills workshops.
Over the summer, the Center welcomed its inaugural group of 30 children to stay for four weeks. Kidsave CEO and Co-Founder Randi Thompson traveled to Ukraine in mid-July to be there.
“I saw firsthand the transformative power of the Miracles Center,” said Randi. “When the kids arrived, they were closed off and scared. Every time there was a loud noise or a car engine backfired, they jumped and ducked. After two weeks, they were playing, hugging, giggling with abandon. They felt safe and free to be children there. What our team has created is a place of hope for a better future for these kids who have been through so much.”
Our team also worked diligently on the children’s behalf, ensuring they were leaving the Center in better circumstances than when they arrived. Of the 30 youth who spent the summer at the Center, social workers reunited 11 with their biological families, placed 4 with foster families, and arranged pending guardianships or adoptive placements for 4 children.
Read more about the summer at the Miracles Center.
In December, we welcomed 30 more kids from the Mykolaiv region to stay with us over the holidays. The kids will remain at the Center until it is safe for them to return to Mykolaiv or until officials find alternative placements for them elsewhere.
Kidsave Ukraine continues to help older youth transitioning out of institutional care through our Pathway to Success program. In 2024, this Corporate Mentoring program served 279 youth, 231 of whom were new to the program, and engaged 133 corporate volunteers to serve as trainers, lecturers, and mentors. Mentors established stable connections with 40 teens, and team leaders trained 13 youth leaders (known as Super-Mentors) in communication, team-building, and coaching skills.
Support a better future for the children of Ukraine in 2025.
Our team in Sierra went into 2024 with the goal of placing 200 orphans with relatives and kin or adoptive families, and we surpassed that goal! In partnership with Integrated Development initiatives- Sierra Leone (IDI-SL), we conducted extensive case mining and identified relatives and kin for placement or—in instances where our team could not locate any living relatives or kin—we found vetted adoptive families for 210 children. This coordinated effort took place across 48 communities in Sierra Leone and one community in Liberia.
Read the story of Abu and Massah who were reunited with their great aunt in Liberia.
Kidsave and IDI-SL also worked to further child protection and education within communities in Sierra Leone. Over 700 community members attended trainings on caring for children, menstrual hygiene, preventing gender-based violence, how to report instances of violence or abuse, and financial literacy. We established clubs dedicated to preventing gender-based violence in 18 schools. We specially trained 98 individuals across 48 communities in case monitoring and reporting on instances of abuse or neglect.
Another important element of our work in Sierra Leone is economic empowerment to ensure families and communities can continue to care for their children. We provided agricultural training to 98 women on improving farm practices, composting, pest control, and small business development and management. We also gave the women hand tools, seeds to start their crops, and food for work support.
We provided micro-loans to 84 families who took in children in 2024 to help support their small businesses and ensure their financial security after taking in a child. Families who take in a child also receive school supplies, bedding, and 50 kgs of rice to help with costs.
Thank you to everyone who has supported us over our first 25 years! We are looking forward to another successful year of supporting older kids in foster care in 2025.
