May 6, 2025 • 16 mins
Bill Ellis speaks with David White, CEO of Fostering Great Ideas
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to Carolina Conference Call. It's a public affairs program
produced by iHeartRadio Greenville. I am Bill Alliston. Hey, Happy May,
and you should know that May is Foster Care Awareness Month.
And we found someone to speak on that in an
area you may not be familiar with. And that's why
we brought in David White. He is the founder and
CEO of Fostering Great Ideas. And before we get into
(00:21):
the mechanics of this wonderful idea that you came up with,
you were one of those individuals that pivoted in his career.
This was not your original career path. What what did
you do before that?
Speaker 2 (00:34):
I did a corporate finance which sounds exciting and worldwide,
but it was really just being in a cubicle working
on deals.
Speaker 1 (00:44):
Was this something that the call to create fostering Great Ideas?
Did this come from any life experience? What led you
down this path? I'm fascinated by that, Thank you, Bill.
Speaker 2 (00:55):
It was not my personal path in terms of life
experience for my family. I grew up in a family
that was very secure, very stable the whole way through,
and loved and loved that experience. What I did experience
as a child was the knowledge that others were outside
of circles of love.
Speaker 3 (01:15):
Others were truly struggling.
Speaker 2 (01:17):
And I saw them very fortunately early in as even
a teenager, when I used to hang out with guys
who were homeless, and instead of simply serving them meals,
I actually.
Speaker 3 (01:28):
Ate with them.
Speaker 2 (01:29):
And that was really restorative to me to say they
need and I need a connection. And I saw them
for the first time and built relationships. And then I
said later on, as I made this career life change
in my midlife crisis early thirties, I decided, children in
foster care need somebody who says, I see you. And
(01:54):
that's how I built the organization from that.
Speaker 1 (01:56):
Family, Tell me and us collective believer, what are some
of the things that are wrong with the foster system? Well,
and because obviously you created this organization to come to
the aid of families who are fostering kids and the
kids who are being fostered, Well said, what's wrong with
the system?
Speaker 2 (02:16):
It's a great question, Bill, because what's wrong in the
system has to go back to the question of what's
wrong with the path that children have to go through
through no fault of their own, which is being removed
from their family so it's maybe not a system dynamic
of the people working in the system, but a dynamic
of the sobriety of removal. I'm a child. I am
(02:40):
now what you're kidding me. I have to Yes, you
have to leave. Your parents are deemed by the state
no longer fit to take care of you.
Speaker 3 (02:48):
In fact, you are in danger.
Speaker 2 (02:51):
Because of perhaps a crippling addiction within the family. Are
somebody coming in to try to destroy the family. We
must all accept that, and you must move into foster care.
Oh and by the way, half of you will be
separated from your brothers and your sisters. While you're kidding me,
I was just with my brothers. I'm protecting them in
(03:12):
this moment, and my family as we're struggling so dearly,
you are going to now be ripped apart, not only
in the removal, but from your siblings. And then there's
a governmental system and very good people all around, foster
parents on down, who say we're going to help shield
you and help stabilize you. And yet that child says,
(03:36):
I don't know what's going on and I'm alone. At
that point, fostering gray ideas comes in and we build
a model to where we say.
Speaker 3 (03:45):
The entire time you're in foster care, we will be
with you.
Speaker 2 (03:50):
We will be on your journey, regardless of the path
it takes, through a lot of community, goodwill, volunteerism, and
a responsiveness to the child at every point.
Speaker 1 (04:00):
Let me ask you this, David, could you speak that
passionately about corporate finance.
Speaker 3 (04:04):
That's a great question. Probably I actually enjoyed corporate financial.
Speaker 1 (04:08):
Yeah, I get that, But I just love I love
when I hear stories about people who pivoted in their life.
And this is a calling, and you are following clearly
a calling something that you inspired. You've built something marvelous here,
fostering great ideas. Reimagine foster care is you? Is your
slogan line I guess for one of a better term.
(04:30):
Tell us a to Z everything there is to know
about fostering great ideas and guys. Later on, I'm going
to tell you where to find them. They've got a
wonderful social media presence as well.
Speaker 3 (04:39):
Thank you, Bill A to Z.
Speaker 2 (04:41):
Consider the child as a enter foster care to the
point of exiting foster care, and an organization you can
be assured is with them their entire journey in this
uncertain place. What that looks like is when you enter
foster care. You are not entering foster care with garbage bags.
You were entering with luggage gently used from the community.
(05:02):
We call that great idea, carry on, you carry on
with dignity. At the point that you enter foster care,
you are so concerned about your own mom or your
own dad, and the moms are in a tragic position.
They feel like failures. At that point, we dignified the
moms up. We rebuild them saying you are important, you
(05:24):
are mom, And we call that great idea Mom's matter.
It's a pure support group for them of those who
have lived the same experience. As you enter into foster care,
you are concerned about where are my siblings? Half a
sibling sets are separated, Bill, and in that separation, if
you're the oldest sibling, if you're one of the listeners
(05:46):
who's like the oldest kid in the family, your goal
is to protect the other kids in some way or
at least boss them around. If you're no longer seeing them,
you're highly anxious as to what's going on with them.
We call that great idea sibling where we say sibs,
y'all are all separated, but we will make sure you
get together every month for a sibling and only visit.
(06:07):
We call that siblink. And then we have donors in
the community, you know, restaurants, activity places who give us
across South Carolina discounts because taking care of at this
point for sibling forty five siblings sets over three hundred
sibling visits every year is sort of expensive because siblings
(06:29):
children like to eat. So we have really nice organizations
that work with us, and we have nice.
Speaker 3 (06:35):
Community groups that donate gift cards.
Speaker 2 (06:37):
And then as children feel stability in those family dynamics,
my mom is okay, my family is okay, my siblings
I can see them, then we support the foster parent
because the truth of the matter is fostering is very difficult.
It's difficult because somebody comes into your home and you
make them a part of your family, and yet they
have another family and they respond and that way of
(07:00):
having two families from a child's vantage point, that's extremely.
Speaker 3 (07:06):
Uncertain.
Speaker 2 (07:07):
That's extremely difficult to understand. So we will support that
foster family unit and we call that care to Foster.
We have all these concepts, we have thirteen of them.
They're all about the child's time and foster care, and
then how we provide a collective response of we see you.
Speaker 1 (07:28):
You started this wonderful idea. By the way, were speaking
with David White, he's the founder and CEO of Fostering
Great Ideas. Going back on the timeline you developed or
thought of this idea started to put wheels in motion
some twenty eleven, about fourteen years ago. Yes, tell me
some of the successes that you've seen through this program,
and obviously you've had more than than a few. This
(07:51):
is a wonderful because you're putting a big, warm hug
around the entire fostering system that's been long needed. And
I would I wasn't even aware. When I was growing up,
my parents fostered a neighbor's son who went through some
very difficulty. He was one of these kids who was
born into a parents who were in their sixties and
his youngest older brother was like fifty years old, and
(08:15):
these parents could not handle this boy. And he was
a bit of a Ronnie was his name. He was
a bit of a problematic child. And my dad went
and said, we got into the fostering program and said
let us take him. So we took him through his
high school years and he was my little brother, became
my roommate as I was growing up, and it was
difficult at first and we navigated through it. But had
we had an organization like this to lean into, I
(08:38):
think it would have made the experience a whole lot better.
You've seen some successes with this program, no doubt. Can
you highlight a few of them?
Speaker 2 (08:45):
Well, we'll go into the teenage boy. Yeah, you mentioned
Ronnie as an example. Hello Ronnie. Out there individuals who
were in foster who are teenagers. There are never enough
foster homes for these particular at her individuals. So although
we're always looking as an organization, we don't actually house children,
(09:06):
but we to promote the idea of fostering. We're also
very understanding that is difficult to foster a team, but
when people do for the whole community, and a lot
of faith communities really do this, well, come around that
foster parents. That's what most of us can do out
in the community. But if people want to get more
(09:26):
relational driven on a one on one relationship with that
teenager and they're not ready to foster, which is perfectly understandable,
then you can mentor you can be a mentor to
a teenager through us. So I'd given my first example,
and there are many. I was, we serve about eight
percent of all the children in South Carolina foster care.
(09:47):
Bill is this example that happened in April, April thirteenth Saturday.
It was the wedding of a young lady Summer and
she had been in foster care when she was a child.
And she had one of our volunteers who stood up
tall and said, I'm going to be the person who's
constantly in this young lady's life. And so from fourteen
(10:11):
to now twenty four, ten years later, Allison, her mentor
of these ten years, walked her walk somewhere.
Speaker 3 (10:18):
Down the aisle. Oh, I love that. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (10:21):
So that is a constant type of story if you
consider even the dramatic nature of really tragedy within human trafficking,
which has often talked about. There's a great study, it's
real data that thirty two percent a third of all
human traffic victims have lived in foster care.
Speaker 3 (10:40):
So you consider the mentor.
Speaker 2 (10:42):
Relationship, the relationship while I'm a teenager that goes on
for ten plus years, which we have a lot of them.
If you're willing to do that as a volunteer. I've
got this individual, I see this person, then you really truncate,
(11:03):
you'd lower that thirty two percent immeasurably. And we've had
a good number of our teens who now said I
have a relationship.
Speaker 3 (11:13):
And one interesting interesting.
Speaker 2 (11:15):
Bill is that she was in a It was actually
unfortunately it was a ged program. She was trying to
do what she needed to do, but there was actually
a groomer there from Las Vegas who came in and said,
I'm going to take you back to Las Vegas. Me
and my husband. Her mentor of many years, said that's
not right. That's something's wrong with that. She was the
(11:36):
girl was going to go because she's looking for longing.
She's looking for a sense of place. She didn't have
a foster home, she had a group home. The mentor
called me. I said to the mentor, no longer call
yourself a mentor, call you yourself her godparent. With that,
the girl's whole embodiment of her heart just broke and
she said, I have somebody and I always have, but
(11:58):
now I see it and I'm not going into last venus. Wow.
Speaker 3 (12:02):
Yeah, these are the normal stories.
Speaker 2 (12:04):
Yeah, in the beauty of being a volunteer supporting as
a tutor. We want every child in South Carolina foster
care to have their own private tutor in the foster home,
just as a volunteer who's encouraging to a third grader
as they're academically saying, I've got my own person who
comes to my foster mom's house and she helps me
(12:26):
every week. To become a mentor for a teenager, to
help siblings across the state to see each other by.
Speaker 3 (12:32):
Being one of our transporters.
Speaker 2 (12:34):
There's so many ways to become involved as a volunteer
in the stories are robust.
Speaker 1 (12:38):
From that, we mentioned that May is Foster Care Awareness Month.
Then we are being made ware thanks to David White,
the amazing organization that he founded back in twenty eleven
called Fostering Great Ideas. I want you to go. You're
on Facebook, right, folks, Sure you are, Go to Facebook
and look them up. I just did, and now I'm
following you guys because now I know who you are.
(13:00):
And that's the wonderful thing about Carolina Conference Call is
each week we meet these amazing individuals who are doing
things in our community to make our community better and
in the world of foster care, there's a lot of
improvements that are needed, and they're going day by day
through a tremendous amount of effort. Now, how can we
help you? What do you need?
Speaker 2 (13:20):
Fostering grade is was built on community response. How can
we all see and then respond? So my main request
at all points is volunteerism. Yeah, consider what it looks
like to take a step back and say I think
I can do something of value. I think I can
(13:40):
see a child for who they are and I can
walk with that child. I may not be ready, but
I may be ready to foster. And if I am,
I'm going to consider teens. But if I'm not ready
to foster, I'm ready to become their person as a volunteer.
So I think I'll join in with fostering.
Speaker 3 (13:58):
Great ideas.
Speaker 1 (14:01):
Is there anything else that we need to cover in
our discussion here, because I don't want to leave a
word out that maybe something I haven't covered yet. Because
I'm fascinated by who you are and what you do.
Speaker 3 (14:11):
Thank you, Bill.
Speaker 2 (14:13):
If given the opportunity, I want to tell you that today, actually, Bill,
it's a remarkable day for one sibling set.
Speaker 3 (14:20):
Okay, so let me share that please do.
Speaker 2 (14:23):
Siblink, one of our thirteen great ideas, as mentioned, really
brings siblings together regardless of what happens to their family situation.
Children will go back to their family their parents have
will not, regardless of the case. In this particular situation
with these three siblings, their rights of their parents were
(14:43):
terminated over a year ago. They were left in foster
care without a knowledge of what's next. However, today Bill,
they are all getting adopted. Really they are now. I
know that because they've been in our Sibling program seeing
each other, going to the Children's Museum of the Upstate,
(15:04):
going to Wadehampton Bowling Lane, going to Unity Park, going to.
Speaker 3 (15:10):
A swamp rabbit right.
Speaker 2 (15:15):
In having a new bond outside of just the trauma
of removal, but a restorative bond through siblink. And now
they're going not only into one adoptive home, but into two.
So during their visit this last week, one of the
girls said, will we no longer see each other because
(15:36):
we're going into different foster placements. Our caregiver, our Sibling
program manager, said, of course not. You will definitely see
each other because the two adoptive parents have both agreed
to continue sibling. So the restorative bond the children are
adopted and now they have a continued bond, a lifelong bond,
(15:59):
which is a sibling.
Speaker 1 (16:01):
How are you doing the Lord's work?
Speaker 3 (16:02):
That's all I got to say.
Speaker 1 (16:03):
Congratulations on making that pivot that you did back twenty
ten or twenty eleven and said, you know, I love
what I do, but this is my calling and you've
really turned it into something remarkable. This is David White.
He's the founder and CEO of Fostering Great Ideas, Reimagine
foster Care. Find out more about these amazing people. You
can check out their website. Best to a way to
(16:24):
go is meet them up on Facebook. They have a
wonderful Facebook presence. I just went there myself Fostering Great Ideas.
You can find out more about the amazing work that
they do for the families, for the children, for the
whole idea of foster care. Just making it better and
like I said, just putting a big warm hug around
the whole system, which is something the system is needed
ever since there was Fostering. Thank you for the work
(16:45):
you do. Thank you Bill, you bet. That's David White
and this is Carolina Conference Call. If you've got an
organization that like to be on our show, we'd love
to hear from you. Just drop me an email, Bill
allis atiheartmedia dot com. Maybe we'll talk to you next week.
Have a great Sunday.
Welcome to Carolina Conference Call. It's a public affairs program
produced by iHeartRadio Greenville. I am Bill Alliston. Hey, Happy May,
and you should know that May is Foster Care Awareness Month.
And we found someone to speak on that in an
area you may not be familiar with. And that's why
we brought in David White. He is the founder and
CEO of Fostering Great Ideas. And before we get into
(00:21):
the mechanics of this wonderful idea that you came up with,
you were one of those individuals that pivoted in his career.
This was not your original career path. What what did
you do before that?
Speaker 2 (00:34):
I did a corporate finance which sounds exciting and worldwide,
but it was really just being in a cubicle working
on deals.
Speaker 1 (00:44):
Was this something that the call to create fostering Great Ideas?
Did this come from any life experience? What led you
down this path? I'm fascinated by that, Thank you, Bill.
Speaker 2 (00:55):
It was not my personal path in terms of life
experience for my family. I grew up in a family
that was very secure, very stable the whole way through,
and loved and loved that experience. What I did experience
as a child was the knowledge that others were outside
of circles of love.
Speaker 3 (01:15):
Others were truly struggling.
Speaker 2 (01:17):
And I saw them very fortunately early in as even
a teenager, when I used to hang out with guys
who were homeless, and instead of simply serving them meals,
I actually.
Speaker 3 (01:28):
Ate with them.
Speaker 2 (01:29):
And that was really restorative to me to say they
need and I need a connection. And I saw them
for the first time and built relationships. And then I
said later on, as I made this career life change
in my midlife crisis early thirties, I decided, children in
foster care need somebody who says, I see you. And
(01:54):
that's how I built the organization from that.
Speaker 1 (01:56):
Family, Tell me and us collective believer, what are some
of the things that are wrong with the foster system? Well,
and because obviously you created this organization to come to
the aid of families who are fostering kids and the
kids who are being fostered, Well said, what's wrong with
the system?
Speaker 2 (02:16):
It's a great question, Bill, because what's wrong in the
system has to go back to the question of what's
wrong with the path that children have to go through
through no fault of their own, which is being removed
from their family so it's maybe not a system dynamic
of the people working in the system, but a dynamic
of the sobriety of removal. I'm a child. I am
(02:40):
now what you're kidding me. I have to Yes, you
have to leave. Your parents are deemed by the state
no longer fit to take care of you.
Speaker 3 (02:48):
In fact, you are in danger.
Speaker 2 (02:51):
Because of perhaps a crippling addiction within the family. Are
somebody coming in to try to destroy the family. We
must all accept that, and you must move into foster care.
Oh and by the way, half of you will be
separated from your brothers and your sisters. While you're kidding me,
I was just with my brothers. I'm protecting them in
(03:12):
this moment, and my family as we're struggling so dearly,
you are going to now be ripped apart, not only
in the removal, but from your siblings. And then there's
a governmental system and very good people all around, foster
parents on down, who say we're going to help shield
you and help stabilize you. And yet that child says,
(03:36):
I don't know what's going on and I'm alone. At
that point, fostering gray ideas comes in and we build
a model to where we say.
Speaker 3 (03:45):
The entire time you're in foster care, we will be
with you.
Speaker 2 (03:50):
We will be on your journey, regardless of the path
it takes, through a lot of community, goodwill, volunteerism, and
a responsiveness to the child at every point.
Speaker 1 (04:00):
Let me ask you this, David, could you speak that
passionately about corporate finance.
Speaker 3 (04:04):
That's a great question. Probably I actually enjoyed corporate financial.
Speaker 1 (04:08):
Yeah, I get that, But I just love I love
when I hear stories about people who pivoted in their life.
And this is a calling, and you are following clearly
a calling something that you inspired. You've built something marvelous here,
fostering great ideas. Reimagine foster care is you? Is your
slogan line I guess for one of a better term.
(04:30):
Tell us a to Z everything there is to know
about fostering great ideas and guys. Later on, I'm going
to tell you where to find them. They've got a
wonderful social media presence as well.
Speaker 3 (04:39):
Thank you, Bill A to Z.
Speaker 2 (04:41):
Consider the child as a enter foster care to the
point of exiting foster care, and an organization you can
be assured is with them their entire journey in this
uncertain place. What that looks like is when you enter
foster care. You are not entering foster care with garbage bags.
You were entering with luggage gently used from the community.
(05:02):
We call that great idea, carry on, you carry on
with dignity. At the point that you enter foster care,
you are so concerned about your own mom or your
own dad, and the moms are in a tragic position.
They feel like failures. At that point, we dignified the
moms up. We rebuild them saying you are important, you
(05:24):
are mom, And we call that great idea Mom's matter.
It's a pure support group for them of those who
have lived the same experience. As you enter into foster care,
you are concerned about where are my siblings? Half a
sibling sets are separated, Bill, and in that separation, if
you're the oldest sibling, if you're one of the listeners
(05:46):
who's like the oldest kid in the family, your goal
is to protect the other kids in some way or
at least boss them around. If you're no longer seeing them,
you're highly anxious as to what's going on with them.
We call that great idea sibling where we say sibs,
y'all are all separated, but we will make sure you
get together every month for a sibling and only visit.
(06:07):
We call that siblink. And then we have donors in
the community, you know, restaurants, activity places who give us
across South Carolina discounts because taking care of at this
point for sibling forty five siblings sets over three hundred
sibling visits every year is sort of expensive because siblings
(06:29):
children like to eat. So we have really nice organizations
that work with us, and we have nice.
Speaker 3 (06:35):
Community groups that donate gift cards.
Speaker 2 (06:37):
And then as children feel stability in those family dynamics,
my mom is okay, my family is okay, my siblings
I can see them, then we support the foster parent
because the truth of the matter is fostering is very difficult.
It's difficult because somebody comes into your home and you
make them a part of your family, and yet they
have another family and they respond and that way of
(07:00):
having two families from a child's vantage point, that's extremely.
Speaker 3 (07:06):
Uncertain.
Speaker 2 (07:07):
That's extremely difficult to understand. So we will support that
foster family unit and we call that care to Foster.
We have all these concepts, we have thirteen of them.
They're all about the child's time and foster care, and
then how we provide a collective response of we see you.
Speaker 1 (07:28):
You started this wonderful idea. By the way, were speaking
with David White, he's the founder and CEO of Fostering
Great Ideas. Going back on the timeline you developed or
thought of this idea started to put wheels in motion
some twenty eleven, about fourteen years ago. Yes, tell me
some of the successes that you've seen through this program,
and obviously you've had more than than a few. This
(07:51):
is a wonderful because you're putting a big, warm hug
around the entire fostering system that's been long needed. And
I would I wasn't even aware. When I was growing up,
my parents fostered a neighbor's son who went through some
very difficulty. He was one of these kids who was
born into a parents who were in their sixties and
his youngest older brother was like fifty years old, and
(08:15):
these parents could not handle this boy. And he was
a bit of a Ronnie was his name. He was
a bit of a problematic child. And my dad went
and said, we got into the fostering program and said
let us take him. So we took him through his
high school years and he was my little brother, became
my roommate as I was growing up, and it was
difficult at first and we navigated through it. But had
we had an organization like this to lean into, I
(08:38):
think it would have made the experience a whole lot better.
You've seen some successes with this program, no doubt. Can
you highlight a few of them?
Speaker 2 (08:45):
Well, we'll go into the teenage boy. Yeah, you mentioned
Ronnie as an example. Hello Ronnie. Out there individuals who
were in foster who are teenagers. There are never enough
foster homes for these particular at her individuals. So although
we're always looking as an organization, we don't actually house children,
(09:06):
but we to promote the idea of fostering. We're also
very understanding that is difficult to foster a team, but
when people do for the whole community, and a lot
of faith communities really do this, well, come around that
foster parents. That's what most of us can do out
in the community. But if people want to get more
(09:26):
relational driven on a one on one relationship with that
teenager and they're not ready to foster, which is perfectly understandable,
then you can mentor you can be a mentor to
a teenager through us. So I'd given my first example,
and there are many. I was, we serve about eight
percent of all the children in South Carolina foster care.
(09:47):
Bill is this example that happened in April, April thirteenth Saturday.
It was the wedding of a young lady Summer and
she had been in foster care when she was a child.
And she had one of our volunteers who stood up
tall and said, I'm going to be the person who's
constantly in this young lady's life. And so from fourteen
(10:11):
to now twenty four, ten years later, Allison, her mentor
of these ten years, walked her walk somewhere.
Speaker 3 (10:18):
Down the aisle. Oh, I love that. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (10:21):
So that is a constant type of story if you
consider even the dramatic nature of really tragedy within human trafficking,
which has often talked about. There's a great study, it's
real data that thirty two percent a third of all
human traffic victims have lived in foster care.
Speaker 3 (10:40):
So you consider the mentor.
Speaker 2 (10:42):
Relationship, the relationship while I'm a teenager that goes on
for ten plus years, which we have a lot of them.
If you're willing to do that as a volunteer. I've
got this individual, I see this person, then you really truncate,
(11:03):
you'd lower that thirty two percent immeasurably. And we've had
a good number of our teens who now said I
have a relationship.
Speaker 3 (11:13):
And one interesting interesting.
Speaker 2 (11:15):
Bill is that she was in a It was actually
unfortunately it was a ged program. She was trying to
do what she needed to do, but there was actually
a groomer there from Las Vegas who came in and said,
I'm going to take you back to Las Vegas. Me
and my husband. Her mentor of many years, said that's
not right. That's something's wrong with that. She was the
(11:36):
girl was going to go because she's looking for longing.
She's looking for a sense of place. She didn't have
a foster home, she had a group home. The mentor
called me. I said to the mentor, no longer call
yourself a mentor, call you yourself her godparent. With that,
the girl's whole embodiment of her heart just broke and
she said, I have somebody and I always have, but
(11:58):
now I see it and I'm not going into last venus. Wow.
Speaker 3 (12:02):
Yeah, these are the normal stories.
Speaker 2 (12:04):
Yeah, in the beauty of being a volunteer supporting as
a tutor. We want every child in South Carolina foster
care to have their own private tutor in the foster home,
just as a volunteer who's encouraging to a third grader
as they're academically saying, I've got my own person who
comes to my foster mom's house and she helps me
(12:26):
every week. To become a mentor for a teenager, to
help siblings across the state to see each other by.
Speaker 3 (12:32):
Being one of our transporters.
Speaker 2 (12:34):
There's so many ways to become involved as a volunteer
in the stories are robust.
Speaker 1 (12:38):
From that, we mentioned that May is Foster Care Awareness Month.
Then we are being made ware thanks to David White,
the amazing organization that he founded back in twenty eleven
called Fostering Great Ideas. I want you to go. You're
on Facebook, right, folks, Sure you are, Go to Facebook
and look them up. I just did, and now I'm
following you guys because now I know who you are.
(13:00):
And that's the wonderful thing about Carolina Conference Call is
each week we meet these amazing individuals who are doing
things in our community to make our community better and
in the world of foster care, there's a lot of
improvements that are needed, and they're going day by day
through a tremendous amount of effort. Now, how can we
help you? What do you need?
Speaker 2 (13:20):
Fostering grade is was built on community response. How can
we all see and then respond? So my main request
at all points is volunteerism. Yeah, consider what it looks
like to take a step back and say I think
I can do something of value. I think I can
(13:40):
see a child for who they are and I can
walk with that child. I may not be ready, but
I may be ready to foster. And if I am,
I'm going to consider teens. But if I'm not ready
to foster, I'm ready to become their person as a volunteer.
So I think I'll join in with fostering.
Speaker 3 (13:58):
Great ideas.
Speaker 1 (14:01):
Is there anything else that we need to cover in
our discussion here, because I don't want to leave a
word out that maybe something I haven't covered yet. Because
I'm fascinated by who you are and what you do.
Speaker 3 (14:11):
Thank you, Bill.
Speaker 2 (14:13):
If given the opportunity, I want to tell you that today, actually, Bill,
it's a remarkable day for one sibling set.
Speaker 3 (14:20):
Okay, so let me share that please do.
Speaker 2 (14:23):
Siblink, one of our thirteen great ideas, as mentioned, really
brings siblings together regardless of what happens to their family situation.
Children will go back to their family their parents have
will not, regardless of the case. In this particular situation
with these three siblings, their rights of their parents were
(14:43):
terminated over a year ago. They were left in foster
care without a knowledge of what's next. However, today Bill,
they are all getting adopted. Really they are now. I
know that because they've been in our Sibling program seeing
each other, going to the Children's Museum of the Upstate,
(15:04):
going to Wadehampton Bowling Lane, going to Unity Park, going to.
Speaker 3 (15:10):
A swamp rabbit right.
Speaker 2 (15:15):
In having a new bond outside of just the trauma
of removal, but a restorative bond through siblink. And now
they're going not only into one adoptive home, but into two.
So during their visit this last week, one of the
girls said, will we no longer see each other because
(15:36):
we're going into different foster placements. Our caregiver, our Sibling
program manager, said, of course not. You will definitely see
each other because the two adoptive parents have both agreed
to continue sibling. So the restorative bond the children are
adopted and now they have a continued bond, a lifelong bond,
(15:59):
which is a sibling.
Speaker 1 (16:01):
How are you doing the Lord's work?
Speaker 3 (16:02):
That's all I got to say.
Speaker 1 (16:03):
Congratulations on making that pivot that you did back twenty
ten or twenty eleven and said, you know, I love
what I do, but this is my calling and you've
really turned it into something remarkable. This is David White.
He's the founder and CEO of Fostering Great Ideas, Reimagine
foster Care. Find out more about these amazing people. You
can check out their website. Best to a way to
(16:24):
go is meet them up on Facebook. They have a
wonderful Facebook presence. I just went there myself Fostering Great Ideas.
You can find out more about the amazing work that
they do for the families, for the children, for the
whole idea of foster care. Just making it better and
like I said, just putting a big warm hug around
the whole system, which is something the system is needed
ever since there was Fostering. Thank you for the work
(16:45):
you do. Thank you Bill, you bet. That's David White
and this is Carolina Conference Call. If you've got an
organization that like to be on our show, we'd love
to hear from you. Just drop me an email, Bill
allis atiheartmedia dot com. Maybe we'll talk to you next week.
Have a great Sunday.
Ellis & Bradley News
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