2022 in Review: A jam-packed year!

2022 was a huge year for Kids to Love, as we hit major service milestones, opened new facilities and expanded our resources for children living in foster care.

In 2022, Kids to Love surpassed a huge number, impacting the lives of more than 300,000 children in foster care since 2004.

Our Food Boxes for Foster Families program surpassed 400 families served since we started the program with Rose of Sharon in 2020. This program has fed 2,290 children in care since its inception.

In May, we awarded scholarships at our annual Scholarship Luncheon, hitting 950 scholarships awarded since 2004. We also celebrated the graduation of a law school student who was a Kids to Love Scholarship recipient.

During the summer months, we prepared backpacks for the coming school year. Our More Than a Backpack program distributed 4,157 backpacks full of school supplies to children in Alabama, Tennessee and Mississippi.

We welcomed new house parents Shiloh and Jordan to Davidson Farms, as well as their son Jace.

KTECH, our job training school, surpassed 300 certifications since it began in 2016. Two classes of KTECH students graduated during the year, and two classes graduated from KTECH VR, our virtual reality programming classes geared toward high school students. KTECH also hosted its inaugural Camp KTECH and Camp KTECH VR programs in the summer.

In September, we cut the ribbon on the first five cottages in the Whitaker Cottage Community, located at Davidson Farms. The cottages serve as homes for girls aging out of foster care.

Also in September, 125 people went Over the Edge for our kids. We sold out of rappelling spots this year and added a third rope!

We made great strides in the first full year our licensed Child Placing Agency was in operation. Our CPA staff trained 60 families to foster children, licensed 41 new families and matched 28 children with foster families. We also became licensed to foster-to-adopt and became a licensed private adoption agency.

In November, we cut the ribbon on our 160-acre Shoals Campus, which will house our CPA members with a focus on mental health and trauma therapy.

And to round out the year, our Christmas For the Kids program filled wish lists for 1,906 children (and Lee was the grand marshal for the Huntsville Christmas Parade)!

The Kids to Love Foundation already has big plans for 2023. In addition to our annual fundraisers like Over the Edge and Denim and Diamonds and continuing to serve children in foster care through our programs, we have more announcements coming soon. We can’t wait to share them! We also hope you decide to pitch in and help support our kids any way you can, whether it be donating money, toys, clothes or your time. We couldn’t do what we do without the support of our partners and the community!