November 2023 Mission - Cards For A Cause
 

ORGANIZATION BEING FEATURED: Braid Mission

DESCRIPTION: Many youth in foster care will never receive a birthday card or a note of encouragement. That’s why Braid Mission launched a program to make sure they know they are remembered and loved. Wherever you live, you can send a card today encouraging youth or thanking the social workers who support them.

Inspired by the resilience of youth who overcame the challenges of foster care, and the caring adults who helped them along the way, Rebecca Edwards and Christopher Chase were convicted by their faith to find ways to surround more youth with supportive community. As a result of their learning about the trauma inherent in foster care, in 2014 they founded Braid Mission, with its unique team-based mentoring model. At its core, Braid Mission is a community of more than 150 active volunteers. These volunteers represent a wide variety of backgrounds, ages, and interests. Every week they gather in teams to surround foster youth with hope, presence, recreation, and community. More than half of Braid’s youth have been matched for two years or longer.

Since its founding, Braid has educated and inspired thousands in the Bay Area and beyond with a message of hope, through outreach events, trainings, and collaborations with partner organizations like the Foster Youth Museum.

WEBSITE: https://braidmission.org/

TYPE OF CARDS REQUESTED: They are requesting birthday, encouragement or staff thank-you cards. Please choose cards that are bright, colorful, and suitable for ages 6-18. You can send cards for a variety of ages, or for no specific age. In addition to birthday cards, they send encouragement cards that can be given any day of the year to youth and their staff/social workers, who also need to hear a message of hope.


ADDITIONAL INFORMATION: Please stamp a sentiment or greeting inside and sign only your first name. Envelopes are needed. Please include just your first name and city/state (or country) in the return address section of each envelope with no street address or corporate address. If you’re sending a variety of cards, please bundle them inside your package and label them as birthday, encouragement, or staff thank you.

SPECIAL RESTRICTIONS:
They cannot use:

• Cards with religious messages or Bible quotes as they do not know the faith of the youth they serve, and they want to serve as many foster youth as they can, regardless of religious beliefs.
• Cards with pictures of ‘happy families’, mothers and babies, flags or religious icons may be unsettling to their youth.
• Cards for specific holidays: Easter, Thanksgiving, Valentine’s Day, school graduation, start of the new school year
• Cards written in Spanish or other languages

MAILING ADDRESS: Please mail cards to...

Braid Mission
Cards of Hope
629 Marin St. #4383
Vallejo CA 94590

I find it amazing that no one has replied to this thread yet - and the number of folks who have looked at the post keeps going up.
As a former foster parent, I'll be sending cards.
Now you all can start posting.

I am just now checking in to see what organization is being sponsored for November. I have lots of birthday cards and cards of encouragement that I will be sending to this worthwhile organization, I will post again once my cards are postal.

What a great organization, I will start on some cards today. Thanks for sharing the information.

I will be sending cards..

Mailed out 20 cards today.

Got a box of cards packed up and going out in the morning mail. Thanks for letting us know about this card drive.

I will have a box of 50 in the mail tomorrow.

Mailed a box of cards yesterday.

Thanks to you all for your support of this cause this month!

I'm a little late in posting on this thread, but I wanted to say thank you for posting about this organization! I had never heard of it and look forward to contributing in the future!