www.ChildRN.org Fall 2015

A Helping Hand

To Friends and Contributors: A Report on Progress and Plans

Restoring Life’s Possibilities to Metro Atlanta’s Homeless Children and Mothers Since 1993

& Adopt-A-Shelter

WOW! Fall is here and so it’s time to start thinking about the Holiday Season. Where

does the time go? Santa’s elves are working double time, and Mrs. Claus is Googling

the route for Santa to take. This year we will be providing gifts for around 2,700

children living in shelters and group homes in 20 Metro-Atlanta counties.

WE’RE GOING TO NEED YOUR HELP!

CRN receives the “wish lists” of all these children, and the Adopt-A-Shelter and 12

Days of Caring programs work in tandem to make their dreams come true. With the

Adopt a Shelter program CRN matches a business, school, club, family, neighborhood,

etc. with a shelter or group home that houses the number of children they feel

comfortable “adopting”. Some of these homes have as few as five children others

over 100, so we have a home that matches the budget of most groups.

Thanksgiving Food Drive By Cliff Kinsey

Please help us make sure that homeless children in Metro Atlanta get to enjoy a bountiful

Thanksgiving feast on Thanksgiving. Our biggest need is gift cards that can be used to buy

Turkeys and perishable food items like milk, eggs, etc. as we have limited cold storage

space.

HOW YOU CAN HELP – Please consider conducting a food drive at your office, church, neighborhood, school,

social or civic club. We can bring you boxes, signs, fliers, and everything needed to make the collection easy on

you. Help sort food that we collection on November 20th, 21st, and 22nd. This is a great volunteer opportunity for

entire families and groups to come out and spend a day volunteering together.

Do you have a truck, SUV, or large car please consider helping up pick up food from the various collection drives

that are happening. Also we will need people to help deliver food to various shelters and group homes that are una-

ble to pick up their food.

To get involved with hosting a food drive please email Cliff Kinsey Cliff.Kinsey@ChildRN.org or call 770-649-7117.

Continued on page 3

By Jim Cox

2 Career Preparation Workshops, Changing Women’s Lives

By Gabrielle Persaud

Although Children’s Restoration Network’s aims to ensure that every

child experiences the childhood that they deserve, CRN also believes

that a key factor to helping these children is helping their mothers

become independent. Many of the participants were once stay-at-home

moms that fled domestic violence, were laid off, or became sick, which

led them to seeking refuge in a homeless shelter. The mothers that

participate in L.E.A.P. workshops have an intense desire to provide for

their families-they just need the resources to do so.

Leadership Employment Achievement Prosperity Workshops aim to do

just that by providing invaluable resources such as resume writing

assistance, interview preparation, and one-on-one attention from an

experienced Human Resources professional in an encouraging

environment. Over the past year, CRN has received such wonderful

support from volunteers that we have also been able to expand these

resources to very deserving youth aged 18-21 that have fled domestic

violence, sexual abuse, pressure to abuse substances including alcohol

and drugs, or were rejected by their loved ones due to their sexual

orientation.

As we continue to expand to provide career preparation services to even more mothers and teens living in local homeless shelters, we are in need of even more volunteers. If you or someone you know are interested in assisting with resume preparation and interview skills on a Saturday morning workshop, please send your resume to Gabrielle Persaud at Gabrielle@ChildRN.org. We are also in need of childcare volunteers that are at least 18 years old and willing to submit to a background check as these volunteers are instrumental in allowing mothers the opportunity to focus on themselves during the workshop. If you are also interested in volunteering with childcare, please email Gabrielle.

Really Special People: Diane Borchers, Judy Bower, Cathy Bramlett, Kathy Brantley, Alan Brown, Jake Bryant, Tom Burke, Fayelene Cherrier, Melissa Clayton, Sally Cottrell, Christy Davis, John DeShazer, Maggie DeCan, Joce-lyn Dorsey, Valarie Dunn, Sybil Elie, Tony Emanuel, Jaime Escamilla, Robert Feldman, Lori Foley, Janelle Gardner, Mike Gilligan, Kimberly Giordano, Erin Grizzle, George Houghtaling, Kendra Hub-bard, Glynn Jenkins, George Juzdan, Fran Killeen, Regina LeBlanc, Mary Lewis, Mike Luckovich, Lynn Manning, Joan McCall, Lauren McGee, Charlie McKinney, Thierry Murad, Rebecca Odom, Margie and Steve Osheroff, the Ott Girls, Peter Pawlenko, Shelia Perkins, Cathe Reams, Amber Seale, Tina Sor-rels, Xuan Trinh, Marc Van Kley, Alan Varghese, Tim Vojta, Wyvonnee Wintlend, Kevin Yates, and Michael Zagryn

3 Project One on One Volunteers Needed! by Gabrielle Persaud

Starting a new school year in a brand new school with no friends can be very intimidating for even the most confident

children. The children of Project One on One know these emotions all too well, as the average homeless child changes

schools at least 2 times per year. The struggle truly begins when these children return to their respective homeless

shelter or group home and attempt to master their homework alone. Many factors including changing schools, lack of

assistance outside of the classroom, learning disabilities, and low self-esteem result in 25% of homeless children not

graduating high school.

Project One on One’s academic mentors provide unparalleled support to these chil-

dren in the form of guidance, encouragement, praise, and love. After working with

our academic mentors for just 1 semester, children not only have improved grades,

but also improved behavior, attendance rates, and most importantly, a caring adult

that is actively speaking life into their future goals and dreams.

As of fall 2015, CRN has expanded its Project One on One services to a local domestic violence shelter that houses an average of 150 children per semester; in other words, we need your help! Academic mentors of Project One on One need but few require-

ments including the ability to pass a background check, an hour and a half a week over 1 semester, If you would like to learn more about Project One on One and how to get involved, e-mail Gabrielle Persaud at MentorCoordina-tor@ChildRN.org or call 770-649-7117.

12 Days of Caring & Adopt a Shelter continued

To fully adopt a group home we ask that each child receives a mini-

mum of $100 worth of gifts. If you are interested in the Adopt a Shel-

ter program call Cliff at 770 649-7117 or email cliff.kinsey@childrn.org.

The 12 Days of Caring is a general toy and gift drive for kids that do not get “adopted”. Again, various groups, businesses, clubs and individuals will donate toys, gifts, and clothing. A list of needs and favorite gifts can be found on our website, www.childrn.org. The gifts can then be dropped off at at our office in Roswell or we can pick them up. Older kids really appreciate clothing or gift cards from Target, Old Navy, Wal-Mart, etc. At the end of the collection the gifts are brought to 5000A Commerece Pkwy. in Roswell, and the Wrap Par-ty begins. This year it will be December 18th through the 21st. Gifts that have been collected can also be dropped off at the Party. The gifts that are collected are divided according to gender, age, and value. We then pass out the kid’s “Wish Lists” from the various shelters and group homes. Although not always a perfect match, volunteers try to get as close as possible to what the kid’s want. When all the kids from a certain home are done we bag them up, and volun-teers deliver them to the home before Christmas. Most can have parties with the kids if they want; some very elabo-rate, with Santa, games, and refreshments, others just soft drinks and pizza or hot wings. If you and your family really want to enjoy the true Spirit of Christmas please consider setting aside a portion of your

Holiday giving for a homeless child. Consider buying some gifts and/or having a party for kids in a group home. I will

always remember a note I received after last Christmas. A family with two preteen kids had decided, instead of buying

gifts for each other they would “adopt” a group home with 6 kids. They delivered the gifts and had a party with the

kids and had a great time. On the way home one of the kids said, “You know, we sure are lucky to be us”. The mother,

who wrote the note, said she laughed and cried all the way home. She declared, “It was the best Christmas our family

had ever had”.

Back 2 School 2015—Best Ever

6,000 homeless children will begin school with a new and filled book bag thanks to the

army of people that took the time to donate a new book bag and school supplies. This

campaign would have not been our biggest ever without the support of WSB TV Channel

2, Kroger, UPS and Northside hospital which served as the anchors for this collection. This

years “Stuff the Bus” was a one day event where we filled 6 school buses with new book

bags and school supplies. Each “Stuff the Bus” location was manned by a WSB TV channel

2 “on air personality”. It was the first time in our history that we have had the second

highest trending hashtag in metro-Atlanta; #StuffTheBus. Hats off to Jocelyn Dorsey with

WSB TV Channel 2 for organizing such a high profile community wide event that blanketed the city during the “Stuff

the Bus” promotion. At the end of the day the real heroes are all of the individuals that took the time to go out and

buy school supplies and book bags and make sure they were deposited in one of our many collections boxes that

were scattered throughout metro-Atlanta. If ever there was a campaign embraced by the wonderful and compas-

sionate people of metro-Atlanta it was our Back 2 School campaign this year.

Just before school began we invited all 2,700 children homeless children living in homeless shelters and group

homes throughout 21 metro-Atlanta counties to come out and attend a Day of Back 2 School Readiness. All of the

children received Health Screenings, hearing and vision test, and overall wellness checks from Georgia State Univer-

sities School of Nursing. We had barbers and beauticians volunteer to give any child that needed one a free haircut

and style. We had 3 bouncy houses, face painting, bead making, an indoor basketball court with 6 goals and a DJ

that played all of the audience participation tunes that really put

the fun in the event. We also served a buffet fit for a king that con-

sisted of BBQ chicken breast, hot dogs, hamburgers, macaroni and

cheese, a smorgasbord of chips and snacks, cheesecakes and choc-

olate cakes and cookies. The highlight of the day was of course the

children receiving a new and filled book bag. It was like Christmas

watching the kids excitedly unzipping their book bags and checking

out the haul of supplies in it. For the children that were not able to

attend the event they sent staff to pick up book bags for their chil-

dren or we had volunteers deliver them directly to the group

homes or shelters. The campaign was so successful that any child

entering a shelter or group home during the 2015/2016 school

year will be provided a new and filled book bag that needs one

______________________________________________________________________________________________

On September 23rd CRN began its 23rd year of:

“Restoring life’s possibilities to metro Atlanta’s home-

less children and mothers since 1993”

CRN has touched the lives of over 60,000 homeless chil-

dren and 15,000 homeless mothers. We could not have

done this without your financial support and your time.

Sincere thanks to all who made this possible!

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by Cliff Kinsey

A New Hope: The Force Awakens (Not A Star Wars Review)

by Ben Minor

Working at Children's Restoration Network provides for many inspirational moments, but hands down, my fa-

vorite thing about working at CRN is getting to go out and interview the amazing young men and women who

apply for our New Hope Scholarship. For many people, going to college or technical school is just another

thing that has to be done in order to start a career and get ahead in life. But for the kids we work with, a college

education provides them with an opportunity to build a brighter future, and each

one has their own set of dreams that drive them.

Some scholarship applicants talk of plans to become teachers, health professionals,

and scientists. Others talk of wanting to start their own business or start a career in

the social service or nonprofit sector so that they can help other kids escape a life

of homelessness and deal with some of the pain and trauma they've experienced.

Some simply talk of goals beyond school and work: having their own place for the

first time in their lives; getting married; starting a family. Gino, Master Degree

All of this is only made more powerful because of where these young men and

women have come from to reach this point: transcending moments of hunger,

abuse, desperation, even contemplation of suicide and coming out on the other side

knowing that their lives and the lives of those close to them will be better. Gino

This year, Children's Restoration Network has awarded a record-high 17 New Hope Scholarships to help these

young men and women get the necessary education and training to help them achieve their career and life

goals. And in the face of rising college costs, CRN has also increased our baseline scholarship from $3,000 to

$4,000 to better help them avoid having to take on crippling student debt.

Thanks to your support, the future will be brighter for these young men and women. Just ask some of our New

Hope Graduates like Gino who is now producing his own TV show, or Coco

who is working in Dubai and jet setting around the globe, or Jennifer, our newest

New Hope Graduate who finished her Bachelors Degree in May and got married

in August.

If you would like more information on how you

can help the next generation of New Hope Schol-

arship recipients take that first crucial step into

adulthood, please contact Cliff Kinsey at

cliff.kinsey@ChildRN.org or call our office at

770-649-7117.

Coco

5

Jennifer

NONPROFIT

US POSTAGE PAID

PERMIT 276

ROSWELL, GA 30076

For volunteer email alerts, please send your email address to Info@ChildRN.org

6

11285 Elkins Road Suite C-4

Roswell, GA 30076

Or Current Resident

Restoring Life’s Possibilities to Metro Atlanta’s Homeless Children and Mothers Since 1993

Celebrate the Children Gala

The Ritz-Carlton, Buckhead was the place to be on July 26, 2015, for Children's Restoration Network's annual "Celebrate the Children" Gala! This is our biggest and most elegant fundraiser every year and this year was no exception. Over 450 people, including corporate sponsors, leaders of the community, volunteers and other guests, came together to support CRN's HeadSmart educational programs. The black-tie optional event featured gourmet cuisine and a bottomless glass of wine with dinner, live and silent auction, and ended with dancing late into the night. Ms. Jocelyn Dorsey, from WSB-TV, served as the Mistress of Ceremonies where she kept the even-ing flowing and the fun going. The highlight and inspiration of the evening was hearing from two of CRN's New Hope Scholarship recipients, and learning how the opportunity for them to continue their education beyond high school has positively impacted their lives. Everyone left the evening knowing that they made a difference, and had a great time doing it!

Don’t miss out on next years “Celebrate the Children” Gala

Save the Date, July 23rd at the Ritz-Carlton in Buckhead

by Melissa Kinsey