SECRET (volunteer) AGENT BRICO

A few weeks ago I asked readers to send me names and numbers of orphanages near me to which I could apply as a volunteer. As an incentive for your legwork I would give kudos here on The Nut to the blogger who hooked me up with the info of the home with whom I ended up working. Today I had my orientation with the chosen organization. And the blogger who ended up hooking me with them was... yeah... I'm not allowed to say. You see, the children who reside in an orphanage have been removed from their homes against their families will in most cases. Alot of these parents are willing to go to great lengths to find out where their children are. So the location of this emergency home and who the staff and volunteers are is to remain quite confidential. If I were to announce who the blogger was that gave me the orphanage's info where I am now a volunteer, you all could look it up in the comments of that post and see the name and number of that 'home' and figure out where I am devoting my time. That would be a pretty big 'no no' apparently. So I will email the 'winning' blogger and let them know how indebted I and these children who will benefit from my presence are to him/her. Going through the 2 hour orientation this morning was quite the eye opener. The children's ages range from 3 days to 21 years old. They all attend a special charter school near their home so as not to be in the public school system. The residents are there for approximately 90 days before being hooked up with foster families. they often arrive in the middle of the night shortly after being taken without notice from their homes. They often leave again with no prior notification. No being able to say goodbye to their new best friends or teachers or roommates. Only 20% of them are ever reunited with their parents and of those, 50% are taken away from their families a second time. After that they are never returned to their homes. The home is funded almost entirely by donations of monies, furniture, food, toys, equipment, etc. For every hour that a person volunteers there they are given a $12 grant from the state. My initial thought is that my time there will be spent helping children with homework. That was along the lines of what I had envisioned and the director confirmed that the kids would benefit immensely from this. I will be bringing Aspen with me each time. Allowing her to benefit from the volunteering experience was the initial catalyst for my looking into this. What she does with her time there will be seen then I suppose. She likes the idea of reading to the littler children or playing games with them. Her time there will actually be officially documented for future high school or college class credits and will also count toward grant money for the home. Of course posts will be coming in the near future so you all can be experiencing this with us. This post will self destruct in 10 seconds.