If you’ve been following me for awhile you know I have a heart for foster care and organizations that serve the vulnerable and voiceless. In what I hope to become a monthly series, today I want to introduce you to We are the Echo, an organization that engages with foster care in Hampton Roads, from working with foster parents to helping social workers. Listen to their story, hear their heart, and find out how you can get involved.
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Tell me a little about yourself and your family.
We have five kids ranging in age from 16 down to 2 years, the youngest two coming into the family through adoption. We’re originally from Alabama, but have lived in Virginia for the last seven years. We love our life here, spending any free time at the beach or in the water. We’ve been in ministry for more than 20 years, Randall as a worship and associate pastor and Kelley in family ministries.
Tell me about your organization.
ECHO Orphancare Partners is our official name, but most people know us as ECHO or We Are the ECHO. We are what’s considered a bridge organization, acting as a liaison between public agencies (social welfare, etc.) and the church. Our goal is to help recruit more families, reduce the number of kids in care, and shorten the amount of time children in our area are in care. We do this by focusing on equipping churches with information and resources, empowering families to overcome any roadblocks to becoming foster or adoptive families, and engaging the community to recognize and respond to the needs around us.
How did your organization begin?
This work has been a long time coming; a slow burn, if you will. Years ago we saw the need and God moved our hearts toward adoption. We weren’t expecting to do anything more than adopt once. But after coming home with our first, we knew God had more work for us to do that wasn’t yet completed. In the last couple of years, God’s been stirring our hearts to do something in our community. There are 150 million children across the world recognized as orphans. That’s a huge number. It’s overwhelming. You don’t feel like you can do anything with that number. But we thought one day, “What if we scale it? The world numbers to the national numbers, to the state level, and down to our own locality? What does it look like then?” We realize that by scaling it, 150 million turned in to only 300. When we scale it down, these numbers are something we can address.
What has been the biggest surprise so far?
Every story we’ve heard so far, even the impossibly huge ones, come from simple, regular, people. There are no superheroes. The other thing that often surprises us is that the people who step up most frequently to serve vulnerable families are often the ones who are already up to their noses in caring for others. Probably because if you’re in the trenches, you understand maybe better than anyone how critical caring for one another is in these weary seasons.
What is the hardest part?
Time and money limitations. In a lot of ways these limitations are governors. Slow movements in the beginning force intentionality in the long term, but we’re facing urgent crises in the realm of foster care and adoption in our communities and we feel this intensity to get solutions in place. And with both of us working full-time jobs right now and loads of work that needs to be done by a small unpaid staff, there’s always this sense of scarcity; never enough money, never enough hands, never enough time.
What fuels your fire and keeps you going?
When people actually engage with us, who don’t keep scrolling on social media, who see what we’re communicating and say “I’ve got to do something, what can I do?” That’s exciting to us. Because we’ve known from the beginning this work was not something we could do on our own. We believe there are others who are motivated to care for vulnerable people, they’re maybe just waiting for the tools, the words, the action steps to move from the comfort of their couch toward the needs of children and families in crisis.
Dream big, where will you be in 10 years?
In ten years there will be 100 local churches actively participating in serving the needs of foster care, adoption, and world-wide orphancare. In ten years, we want to have told 100 stories of children finding permanent, safe, loving homes. We believe in less than ten years we’ll see more waiting families than waiting children, more days at zero children waiting to be adopted. We want to have a camp for families with a staff who’s trained to care for the unique needs of foster, adoptive, and special needs families so they can relax and reconnect. We want to open a retail/storefront to employ foster youth who are nearing age-out, not only to give them an opportunity to work a job, but to offer them skills, life coaching, tutoring, college prep, and more. We also think we could see our model replicated in other localities in other states where we have relationships.
How can someone get involved?
Become a foster parent and say yes to children who are harder to place; those over the age of 9, medically complex, and sibling sets. Say yes to adoption, yes to respite care for foster and adoptive families, yes to wrapping around foster and adoptive families in a season of transition. Say yes to mentoring, say yes to supporting the work financially to make sure it continues. You may feel like you can’t contribute to the solution. Scale it down. What can you do for one or for a few? Do that thing!
