Rodney, National Council for Adoption & Wal-Mart Help Raise Foster Care Awareness

Wal-Mart is partnering with the National Council for Adoption (NCFA) to promote awareness of adoption and foster care this month, which is National Foster Care Month.

As part of the Families For All partnership, the retailer donated $100,000 for an awareness campaign that includes public service announcements, website development and media exposure for Rodney Atkins, a country music artist and NCFA spokesperson.

Atkins, who twice had potential adoptive families return him to the foster care system after he became ill, was successfully adopted as a 3-year-old out of the Holston United Methodist Home for Children in Greenville, Tenn.

“My parents, Margaret and Allen Atkins, gave me my name, and they didn’t take me back,” he said. “They kept me. They’re angelic souls. They’re just wonderful people.”

According to the NCFA, approximately 107,000 of the 400,000 children in the U.S. foster care system are waiting to be adopted. Though those numbers have decreased slightly over the last few years, the number reaching the age of legal adulthood before being adopted has gone up — to about 30,000 this year, said NCFA President Chuck Johnson.

“The odds are against them as they are released into the world unsupported and unprepared,” he said.

FOR MORE INFORMATION
Learn more about National Foster Care Month.

Learn more about the National Council for Adoption.

For more information CitzenLink.