[More details about the volunteer activities are below photo gallery]

If you want to learn more about group volunteer projects in Middle Tennessee, please contact Lyndsay Berry (email or 615-250-7323).

• Teams of volunteers from Crye-Leike and Panera Bread Company helped Youth Villages fill backpacks for Middle Tennessee youth from pre-kindergarten to high school, even young people in college.
• In November, Youth Villages partnered with Nashville’s Chapter of Events and Adventures Singles for their second annual silent auction fundraiser. The event was held at the Hillwood Country Club. Themed baskets of donated items and services were auctioned off during the event. Thank you to Kara Donahue and Events and Adventures Singles team for their hard work on this event to benefit Youth Villages.
• Instead of a holiday celebration, Healthways employees chose to participate in Youth Villages’ Holiday Heroes program for the fifth year in a row. Healthways Inc. kicked off the holiday season by shopping for more than 200 Middle Tennessee children at the Walmart in Cool Springs. In addition, Healthways also sponsored the holiday party for young people in Youth Villages’ transitional living program for the second year in a row and invited all three Nashville group homes to the Healthways facility to learn about gardening, fitness, nutrition and healthy cooking. The Healthways Café chef did cooking demonstrations to teach the youth different and healthy ways to make salsas and smoothies.
• More than 30 community volunteers generously spent a Saturday in December wrapping holiday gifts for children served by Youth Villages. Thank you to the volunteers from Father Ryan High School and Country Music Television for their participation in this activity.
• Tennessee Titan Kamerian Wimbley hosted “Shop with a Titan” at Walmart, where Titans players went shopping with 50 youth from Youth Villages of Middle Tennessee.
• Employees from the Banana Republic Factory Outlet replanted the garden at the Binkley Group Home and tie-dyed T-shirts with the teens. The group also went to the Wallace Group Home to discuss employment opportunities and work individually with the girls to submit online job applications.
• Volunteers from Jackson National Life organized a book and board game drive to benefit Youth Villages’ Nashville group homes.
• Hunt Brothers Pizza invited youth from all three of Youth Villages’ Nashville group homes to their facility for a resumé and interview workshop. Youth also toured the facility and were provided lunch.
• For the 11th straight year, HCA employees volunteered at Youth Villages for HCA’s Caring for the Community Day. This year, HCA volunteers repainted the entire interior of the Binkley Group Home.
• Dell invited girls at the Wallace Group Home to their facility for an Adobe Photoshop training. In addition, the girls also shadowed Dell employees in the ProSupport department to learn the different aspects of their job responsibilities. Dell volunteers also visited the Wallace Group Home to facilitate a workshop teaching the girls about etiquette, manners and respect.

Happy Holidays from Youth Villages! Thank you for supporting our work as The Force for Families.

I arrived at their front door five days before Christmas. I was 17, one of the “older” foster children that you hear about. I felt like I had nothing and no one.

My life had been one disappointment, one rejection after another. My volatile mother asked me to leave her house when I was 14. I spent a few weeks living in homeless shelters and on the street. Eventually, I ended up in the child welfare system. There was nowhere else for me to go.

So there I was on their doorstep. I didn’t expect anything from them, and from the first day, they offered me everything. I have a collage of photos that tell the story of that year. There are photos of my birthday party, the prom, graduation parties and finally my high school graduation.

When I met them, I had expected just another foster home. Instead, I found a family who cared about me — and will always care about me.

• Tennessee foster kids face new hurdles at 18
• Youth Villages pushes for expansion

The program began through the generosity of Clarence Day, The Day Foundation and other private donors. In Tennessee, the Department of Children’s Services has matched our private donations since 2006, allowing us to help more young people.

We are proposing expanding the program next year to help every eligible young person in the state. We believe our public/private partnership in Tennessee can become a national model and show what we can do in every state we serve. Youth Villages has pledged to donate $12 million over the next four years so we can expand the program to help every foster child in Tennessee who needs these services.

Foster parents Bobby, right, and Johhny, left, with Jada, Chase and Joseph

If you have enough love in your heart for a child who desperately needs it, please help a child find the way home. Youth Villages provides training and support for foster parents in Tennessee, Alabama and Mississippi. Learn more at youthvillages.org.

Bobby’s day usually begins around six in the morning, preparing meals and getting the children and her husband, Johnny, ready for their day. To say her home is a whirlwind of activity for most of the day is an understatement.

For Bobby and Johnny, it’s a mission of sorts. They both had children from previous marriages, but their union was more than a simple marriage. It was the grand opening of their home.

“It wasn’t like ‘those are your kids and these are mine,’” Johnny said. “It’s all of us together. We’re all in it together.”

During the past four years, they’ve opened their home to more than 10 foster children, recently adopting three – Chase, 15; Jada, 8; and Joseph, 3. Both coming from abusive and neglectful childhoods, Bobby and Johnny decided their home was going to be a haven, a safe place for children who needed attention, care and love.

“I’ve always wanted to protect abused children,” Bobby said. “I wanted to help children who’ve been mistreated.”

Chase was removed from his home because of abuse and neglect. He was also physically and verbally aggressive. His first foster placement didn’t work well, but Bobby and Johnny were patient and Chase slowly transformed. He’s part of the family, and helps care for his younger sister and brother.

Joseph was born to a drug-addicted mother. He cried and wailed incessantly while his body weaned itself from the narcotics. He had to be soothed and held constantly. His sleep was erratic. Bobby and Johnny never wavered.

“We just held him and loved him,” Johnny said. “There wasn’t anything else we could do.”

There are no signs of those troubles now, as Joseph and his freshly cut Mohawk hairdo speed from room to room and down the hallway with his sister. He laughs and plays just like any other 3-year-old boy.

Bobby runs children to doctor’s appointments and other things. In addition to the adopted children, they’re still foster parents to three other children. She calls them all by pet names and maintains an unending supply of affection and energy. To nearly everyone who goes in and out their front door, they’re called Mamaw and Papaw. But there are still standards.

“Oh yes, we’ve got rules,” Bobby said. “We expect good grades in school, manners, and being respectful of adults and other children. They all have chores to do to help around the house. We expect them to mind.”

The children’s bedtime is usually around 8 in the evening. Bobby and Johnny end the evening cleaning and straightening up the circus of the previous 14 hours.

Most days, Bobby’s evening continues through to the wee hours of the next day.

“Having foster children is like this: It’s a lot of news, and it can be bad one day, good the next day and then great another day,” she said. “It’s a lot of work and you have to be flexible. But we love all of them. It’s difficult sometimes when they leave – you want them to go home to their families, but you get attached and you’re sad to see them leave.”

And then the next morning begins the daily routine. Bobby and Johnny said they’d take in more children if they could.

The children are safe. They’re loved. Most important, they’re happy.

We first featured Robert and his family in a September 2011 blog post. Read it here.

About a year following the death of Larry Plaisance, the family continues to move forward and help teenagers. In fact, the family welcomed an additional youth.

Robert did well during his first year of college. He’s in the YV Scholars program, where Youth Villages pays his tuition and college costs provided he maintains certain academic and community service standards. He was also the first-ever freshman editor of his school newspaper. He even took a few upper-level courses.

The family is known for fostering young people who are tough to place. In fact, Devan, the family’s biological son, said his mother and father took the children no one else wanted. After Larry’s death last year, Devan returned home to help his mother, Nancy. And the youth in the home took to Devan, who runs a martial arts school in the area and is a mixed martial arts fighter and teacher.

Devan is also studying to become a firefighter. In addition to Nancy’s regular job, she’s also taken up making jewelry in her spare time. There’s quite a bit happening at the home and with the children. One of the children trains regularly with Devan and plans to compete soon. Another was recently awarded all-district honors in wrestling at his school.

Equine-assisted therapy is known for many benefits, including teaching improved communication and social skills, boundary setting, empathy toward others, self control and confidence, responsibility and accountability, problem solving and cooperation, honesty and trust and overcoming challenges in a non-threatening atmosphere.

This spring, Youth Villages launched a new service activity called equine-assisted therapy for children in the Youth Villages Middle Tennessee foster care and adoption programs.

This is a fully certified and effective therapeutic activity for helping troubled children overcome life’s roadblocks by working with horses. A horse mirrors human behavior and is a very forgiving animal.

Dede Beasley, M.Ed., LPC, licensed therapist, holds a long-time certification in equine-assisted therapy. Sessions take place in her barn, Lacey-Roo Stables, in Ashland City.

During the sessions, instead of riding the horses, the children work with the horses from the ground, grooming, feeding and learning how to handle, lead and interact with the horse appropriately and effectively.

Karla Coleman with her adopted daughter, Alexis

Throughout her life, Karla Coleman loved being around children, particularly as a mentor to young girls. As an adult, she decided to use her love of children to make a positive difference by becoming a foster parent.

Little did Coleman know, she would end up providing a permanent home to three children in need.

Coleman and Alexis during adoption proceedings in Shelby County Chancery Court

Coleman celebrated National Adoption Day this year by adopting her foster daughter, 2-year-old Alexis.

Alexis was placed in foster care at birth, having tested positive for cocaine. Youth Villages helped Coleman become Alexis’ foster mother when the baby was just 2 months old and attempts to unite her with birth family members had failed. Two years later, she can officially call Coleman “Mommy.”

By joining the Coleman family, Alexis also gained a sister and a brother, who both also were adopted from foster care.

Coleman adopted her oldest daughter, Kaylin, now 18, when the girl was 9. In 2004, Coleman became a foster parent again through Youth Villages, fostering and eventually adopting her son, Mikhail, now 7.

“I became attached to these children,” Coleman said. “I didn’t want to see them bounce from home to home. I wanted them to have some permanency.”

Coleman says Alexis calls her older brother “Bubba.”

“Mikhail loves Alexis,” Coleman said. “He’ll give her kisses and tell her. ‘I love you, Lexi.’”

Despite the setbacks she faced at birth Alexis has come a long way, Coleman says. She has been through speech, occupational and physical therapy and is now functioning at her age level. Coleman is excited for Alexis to start preschool in the fall at Immanuel Lutheran School, where Mikhail is currently a first-grader.

Coleman credits Youth Villages for making the fostering and adoption process easy. She says Youth Villages provided her with the right training and preparation she needed to care effectively for her children.

With the help of her caseworker, she has been able to get support whenever she needs services, particularly for Mikhail and Alexis, who are medically fragile.

Coleman also advocates for foster parenting and adoption, encouraging others to become foster parents.

“I tell them to go ahead and go through the training classes, if they’re interested in becoming foster parents,” she said.

“A lot of people are afraid to make the commitment, but it’s not as scary as you think. Your heart may be broken when you hear these kids’ stories, but it will mend.”

Coleman advises potential foster parents to go into fostering for the right reasons and to keep in mind that most foster children return to their families.

“No matter how long these children are with me, I want to teach them something that will impact them in the future. Years later I want them to think, ‘Ms. Coleman taught me this,’” she said.

Coleman also said she is ready to take in another child and potentially adopt again. She plans to keep fostering.

“I’ll probably be 70 and fostering,” she said with a laugh.

Learn more about fostering a child through Youth Villages at youthvillages.org.

One of his uncles calls him Little Clifton because of his resemblance to his father.

In fact, after not seeing him for nearly a decade, Cody’s paternal grandmother, Jacque, singled him out in a room full of boys at a Youth Villages group home.

“I knew exactly who he was,” Jacque said. “He looked just like his father.”

Teaming with Jacque, the Tennessee Department of Children’s Services and Youth Villages made quick work of reuniting Cody with his grandmother. After years of living in state custody, Cody, 17, had a home.

“We met with the grandparents in July of last year,” said Laura Anderson, Youth Villages family intervention specialist. “We had a really good team, and made the permanent transition at the end of August.”

Jacque and Cody made up for lost time, reuniting with extended family and mother and father. But there was still quite a bit to work through. Cody’s mother and father terminated their parental rights when he was young, the consequences of drug abuse. He was then adopted, but became physically and verbally aggressive and spent time at Youth Villages’ Deer Valley residential campus.

In November of 2007, he was placed in state custody.

“There was so much frustration and anger,” said Carlos Hawkins, regional manager for Youth Villages’ residential services. “The biggest trigger was the adoptive parents. I think there was a false hope that he was going to return home.”

Cody went into foster care – homes in Knox County, Scott County, Claiborne County, Cocke County, Kingston, then back to Knoxville; then group homes throughout Middle and West Tennessee. He also stayed at Youth Villages’ Bartlett Campus. He was running out of placement options. Julie Flannery of Harmony Adoptions found Jacque.

“They asked me if I was interested in taking custody of Cody, and I said, ‘How fast can we do this?’” Jacque said. “It’s like I’d waited 17 years for that day.”

Cody is a smart young man, but the years of foster homes and state custody had affected his ability to trust others. And to compound the confusion, he was introduced to his biological family after years of feeling alone.

Carlos, who worked with Cody during the transition from Deer Valley to a group home, became Cody’s mentor.

“It took some time for Cody to trust that we weren’t there to take him out of the home,” Laura said. “Jacque was committed, but there was still some doubt with Cody.”

And he compressed those missed years into a few months. His father came to visit. He spoke with his mother. He found out he had a younger sister. He met aunts and uncles.

“My dad visited for two or three days, and I had a lot of feelings about him not being there and why he left,” Cody said. “I thought I didn’t, but I did. I was angry with him, but I learned a lot about what was going on at the time. I’d say we have a good relationship now.”

Carlos witnessed Cody’s transition from those first days at Deer Valley, through group homes and foster homes.

“I wasn’t sure he’d be able to make it,” he said. “He was just so angry, and he’d lose control every time he was told he wouldn’t be going back home to his adoptive parents. He needed a home environment. Now, Cody can express himself rationally. He can cope with his feelings.”

Jacque played an important role in that.

“It was a big adjustment with him coming in the home,” Jacque said. “But he’s home, and we’re just happy he’s here.”

Laura worked with Cody and the family through the first months of the new home arrangement, continuing to help with Cody’s coping skills, setting boundaries and establishing rules and consequences in the home.

There are still issues that arise, as there are in any home with a teenager, but the family works through them just like any other family. Cody kids around quite a bit with Jacque and his grandfather, Ken. He also enjoys cooking dinner for the family.

“Cody’s very protective of his family,” Laura said. “He has a deep respect for his grandmother, and the connection has been intensified by those years of absence.”

Cody should finish high school this spring. He plans to attend college to learn how to be a chef — just like his father.

Desmond, 10
Mississippi

Desmond was their last foster child. He told Mary one day that he wanted a dad and a home, and for Mary and Andrew, Desmond closes part of a chapter in a lifetime spent providing a safe home for children.

As foster parents, they believe being committed to the children is what is most important. With Desmond, that commitment took another step in September when they finalized his adoption.

“I want to go to college with my family’s help.” – Desmond

“Our goal for Desmond is to finish high school and college and work in whatever field he chooses.” – Mary, Desmond’s mom

“Since being in a stable foster home, Desmond’s finally learning how to accept the love, attention and support that the foster parents are giving him. Desmond finally got the permanency that he has been searching for. Now that the adoption is final, he feels more at peace and does not have the fear of being moved from the home.” – Jaqueline Randle, Youth Villages counselor

Desmond is one of several children featured in the Youth Villages 2011 Program Report. Learn how Youth Villages helps children like Desmond and hundreds of others like him every year through our foster care and adoption programs.