Today we’d like to introduce you to Chris Yaughn.
Hi Chris, so excited to have you with us today. What can you tell us about your story?
15 years ago God nudged us into the Foster Care Arena. Took a little convincing at first, but eventually we ended up at a orientation with out local DFCS office. the Take away from that meeting was that there was a great need, but few resources coming down from the state to add to the ranks of foster parents in our counties.
We left that meeting with a passion to help, but no clear path. After numerous phone calls emails and just random conversations with folks to try to figure out where we could help, it became clear that God was leading us to be the Help. Initially it was just collecting clothes for Foster parents to look through during trainings, to help fill out their needs for their kids. Over the years that grew slowly, it has evolved into a debt free organization that serves thousands of people annually meeting clothing needs, hosts hundreds of nights of summer camp every year at our own campground, and redistributes millions of dollars worth of donated products to hundreds of regional and statewide organizations that are in the trenches every day serving people in many different ways shapes and forms.
our scope has grown beyond meeting the immediate basic needs of our kids in Foster Care locally, and has become a broader effort to share the unconditional love of Jesus with children in crisis situatiins .
our summer camps at the 7th mile arm. are within an hour drive a Savannah and were built to host summer camps for our children in Foster Care. Thanks to a generous gift of land, we are in the process of building G&M McIntosh Youth Camp, a second location, near Townsend. both campuses are committed to helping children create Lifelong memories, children who often have been robbed of the opportunity to develop positive poor memories during their childhood. One of our mottos at camp is “not just four days”. We often have volunteers go on to become foster parents, and we have seen several adoptions happen because of relationships formed at camp.
across all of our efforts we operate debt free, and very lean. Thanks to hundreds of volunteers we are able to operate with only one paid staff.
Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way. Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
hard work and a willingness to just keep showing up day after day, the good days and the bad days. The days where there’s tons of support and the days when you’re the only one there, have been rewarded with the incredible capacity to help
fundraising is always an interesting challenge in the nonprofit world, God seems to just send us what we need when we need it. Not always a lot of extra, but always enough. we are currently working really hard to find partners to help build out our second footprint, in an attempt to double the number of lives we can impact.
we’re also actively recruiting volunteers to help work summer camps. Often times people are harder to come by than money. People passionate about serving and willing to put others before themselves.
As you know, we’re big fans of you and your work. For our readers who might not be as familiar what can you tell them about what you do?
we serve people. Specifically children and Foster Care.
we make ourselves available, to connect need with capacity or capacity with need. In a lot of different format
What matters most to you? Why?
the passionate that drives the bus, is the passion God has planted deep within us to serve our kids who have largely been dealt difficult hands in life. Seeing those kids come out of their shell, encourage and love on others, and then come back years later to work camp alongside us has been an incredible journey.
Pricing:
- all of our efforts are fully find it by private donations. No state money goes into doing what we do. And no foster parents have charged for our services.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.fosteringfamiliesga.com/
