Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Day: A Time to Help Foster Children

We celebrate Martin Luther King’s Birthday on Monday, January 15th, with a public plea: In the spirit of the late civil rights leader, please support our efforts to help foster children, America’s most vulnerable boys and girls.

King said, “The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of convenience and comfort, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy.”

Helping foster children is a challenge that King would say must be met for the good of these youngsters as well as for the good of Prince George’s County and our nation.

We are Court Appointed Special Advocate (CASA)/Prince George’s CountyCourt Appointed Special Advocate (CASA)/Prince George’s County, a non-profit that recruits, trains and supervises CASA volunteers for foster children, boys and girls who have been abused and neglected, abandoned and traumatized.

Half of all foster children drop out of high school, increasing the chances that they will end up in poverty and possibly even in jail. Studies show that they do better in school and in life with a CASA, a dedicated volunteer who advocates in court for their emotional and physical needs.

Determined to improve their chances of success, we assign one CASA volunteer per foster child, and currently have enough CASA volunteers for about thirty-five percent of the 500 foster children in Prince George’s County.

Our goal is to eventually have a CASA volunteer for each foster child.

Please consider becoming a CASA volunteer or supporting us in some other way, perhaps with a donation or by volunteering in any one of our many outreach efforts.

Together, in the spirit of Martin Luther King Jr., we can help meet the “challenge” of meeting the needs of foster children and helping them build a path to a positive future.

For more information, please call us at (301) 209-0491 or go to pgcasa.org

About Court Appointed Special Advocates (CASA)/Prince George’s County, Inc.

Court Appointed Special Advocate (CASA)/ Prince George's County, Inc. is a volunteer-based organization that partners with the juvenile court to improve the lives of abused and neglected children living in foster care. With a strong commitment to diversity, CASA trains and supervises volunteers from the community who advocate for the best interest of children, recognizing and respecting each child's individual needs. By providing a voice to children in the foster care system, it is our goal to promote the timely placement of the children we serve in safe, permanent homes.