Boxes of Love Project Inc receives grant from the Bob and Joan Taylor Family Fund of Oregon Community Foundation

Attachments

20220104-122736-Boxes of Love Press Release Jan 2022 OCF Grant.pdf

Troutdale, Ore. – Boxes of Love Project Inc (Boxes of Love) announced today that it has been awarded a $2,000 grant from the Bob and Joan Taylor Family Fund of Oregon Community Foundation. This funding will be used to support the programmatic activities of Boxes of Love which is centered on providing immediate support to children and babies entering the foster care system after being discharged from local area hospitals.

Once Boxes of Love receives a request for support, volunteers assemble a large tote valued at $500 which includes all the items necessary to support the child’s immediate needs. Totes are then brought to the hospital to accompany the child upon discharge into their new foster family’s home. These totes help to provide the children with a small sense of comfort, control, security, and happiness during an incredibly scary and tumultuous time in their lives.

“2021 was our busiest year yet,” said Lyndsee Wunn, RN, Boxes of Love Project Inc Executive Director. “We are so grateful for this unexpected gift from the Bob and Joan Taylor Family Fund of Oregon Community Foundation to help ease the transition of children and babies as they enter into the foster care system. Requests for Boxes of Love totes have been up 50% throughout the entirety of 2021 and we just recently delivered tote #800 to one of our local foster families. Support from our community is necessary to allow us to keep up with the growing demand for our services. Every donation helps us to continue supporting our mission and these children and babies who need us the most.”

The impact of a Box of Love tote is two-fold: not only does it provide a child with a tangible representation of the community’s support and love for them; it also provides their foster family with the resources they need to support the child’s immediate needs. Foster families are in short supply, and most have only a couple days, or sometimes mere hours, to prepare for when a child is placed with them.

Working as a pediatric nurse at Randall Children’s Hospital in Portland, Boxes of Love founder and Executive Director, Lyndsee Wunn, RN, has seen and cared for children first-hand that have experienced what many of us can only fathom. The newborns and children that find themselves in the hospital and discharged into foster care have often endured the unthinkable: horrific abuse, neglect, and/or tumultuous, unstable homes often plagued by drug use or parental abandonment. And more often than not, they enter and leave the hospital alone, without family and friends to visit and comfort them. Lyndsee created Boxes of Love in 2014 with the intent to help these children know that their community cares about them and that they are valued. Most children or infants enter foster care simply with the clothes on their back or a hospital-provided onesie. Boxes of Love provides a tangible representation of the care that each and every child deserves and a loving reminder that they are not defined by their situation.

About Boxes of Love Project Inc

At the most fundamental level, Boxes of Love Project Inc (Boxes of Love) exists to support the transition of infants and children (up to age 18) entering into foster care after being discharged from local hospitals. Started as a grassroots effort in 2014, Boxes of Love partners with local area hospitals to provide these infants and children with a “Box of Love”: a large tote filled with new clothing, pajamas, shoes, toys, books, toiletries, formula, and other comfort items to provide a child and their new foster family with all the essentials that are needed during this transitional time. It is the mission of Boxes of Love to make sure these babies and children know that they are special, they are valued, they matter, and most importantly, they are loved. Currently, Boxes of Love has strong partnerships formed with Randall Children’s Hospital, Doernbecher Children’s Hospital, St Vincent’s Hospital, Legacy Salmon Creek Medical Center, Legacy Good Samaritan, Salem Hospital, Providence Portland Medical Center, and most recently, Mount Hood Medical Center in Gresham.

For more information or to donate to this important cause, please visit www.boxesofloveproject.org

About Oregon Community Foundation

Oregon Community Foundation (OCF) puts donated money to work in Oregon – more than $100 million in grants and scholarships annually. For more than 45 years, OCF grantmaking, research, advocacy and community-advised solutions have helped individuals, families, businesses and organizations create charitable funds to improve lives for all Oregonians. Impactful giving–time, talent and resources from many generous Oregonians–creates measurable change.

For more information about OCF, please visit: www.oregoncf.org

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