The Final State of the Union
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Summary:
Joshua DuBois, Executive Director of The White House Office of Faith-based and Neighborhood Partnerships attended the Wendy's Wonderful Kids program of the Dave Thomas Foundation for Adoption and shared the Obama Administration's commitment to supporting foster children.
Joshua DuBois, Executive Director of The White House Office of Faith-based and Neighborhood Partnerships, speaks at the Wendy's Wonderful Kids program in Columbus, Ohio. May 17, 2011.
Today, there are more than 114,000 children in foster care waiting to be adopted. These are children who entered foster care through no fault of their own, and deserve a family as much as any other child.
Fortunately, organizations around the country are working tirelessly with the Obama Administration to make sure every child has a loving home. One of those organizations is the Dave Thomas Foundation for Adoption and their Wendy’s Wonderful Kids program. Earlier this week, Joshua DuBois spoke at the 2011 Wendy’s Wonderful Kids Annual Summit in Columbus, Ohio, and shared with them President Obama’s commitment to improving the lives of youth in foster care.
The Wendy’s Wonderful Kids program is a network of adoption professionals that work for public and private adoption agencies. In just the short history of Wendy’s Wonderful Kids, they have already found families for over 2,000 children in foster care. As Joshua noted in his speech: “That is powerful. Not because it’s a big number, but because of the importance of every single child, repeated 2,160 times.”
These children are a major focus of the Obama Administration as well, and we have partnered with the Dave Thomas Foundation on numerous occasions to lift up these issues. Joshua spoke about the Administration’s accomplishments in the child welfare arena and our hopes moving forward. He also acknowledged that “government will never be the ultimate solution. In Washington, we can put in place good policies that help our kids, but at the end of the day it will be about communities and individual families stepping up to the plate, and opening up their hearts and their homes.”
Michael Wear serves as Executive Assistant to the Executive Director of The White House Office of Faith-based and Neighborhood Partnerships.
