Since we launched Birthdays For All back in May, we’ve seen the amazing power of people from the local community come together to help our cause. In just a few short months, we’ve managed to provide 114 foster children with some amazing birthday presents. And that number is rising with each passing birthday.

It’s been so great to see people reach out to us to offer their advice and partnership. People such as Amanda Jones, a local realtor who donated a portion of her commission to us and persuaded the LDS Church in Mt Pleasant to sponsor the month of October birthdays. Her husband, Badi Jones, also helped write some code for our website, as did local WordPress guru, Mannie Schumpert.

Lee Deas from ObviousLee Marketing has given us some invaluable advice and had some fun picking out gifts for some wishlists.

Deidra Branyon attended our first wrapping party and then got her church, Coastal Community Church, to sponsor all the September Birthdays! Her daughter is going to use her birthday party to ask for gifts for foster children instead of herself.

Wrapping presents would have been much less fun if it wasn’t for the help of people like Caleb Copper, Jennifer Cole, and all the volunteers who attended our Wrapping Parties.

When people get involved, our impact is greater, and we have much more fun. This is why we are delighted to announce that we are having our very first event, the Toy Drive & Fun Fest on Saturday, September 26th 2015 at 2:30pm at The Art Place Studio. Find out more information on our new Events page.

We want to give a huge thanks to Lisa Bayorek from Macaroni Kid Charleston, who has featured us in their weekly newsletter, and helped us organize this event and everyone who has helped. There really are too many people to name individually so if you don’t see your name here know we truly appreciate all you’ve done. Also, thank you to all the following local organizations who reached out to get involved:

• Andolini’s Pizza
• Anthology Candles
• The Art Place Studio
• Blackbeard’s Cove
• The Cake Stand
• Charleston Jump Castles
• The Children’s Museum of the Lowcountry
• Jamberry Nails
• Macaroni Kid Charleston
• Mud Pie Girl Bakery
• Storybook Encounters
• Teacup & Trucks
• Wildtree

It’s exciting to have so many awesome organizations come together to make this a great event.

We hope to see many of you come along to the event. Please help us spread the word on Facebook, Twitter, and your local communities by sharing our Events page.

We met Deidra Branyon at our first wrapping party back in June. After helping us wrap around 100 presents that day, Deidra asked her church, Coastal Community Church, if they could sponsor the month of September birthdays for foster children. Thankfully, they agreed. So we got to work and provided their congregation with a giving tree of foster children.

A month later, we headed back to Coastal Community Church to pick up the presents and we were amazed to see the biggest haul of presents we’ve seen so far! There were 42 children with birthdays in September and it was our biggest birthday month yet. The care that each person took in picking out gifts was evident in the wrapping paper, gift bags and beautiful birthday cards they personally wrote.

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Birthdays For All featured on South of Broad Living Magazine

We are so excited that Birthdays For All was featured in the August issue of South of Broad Living. Not only did we get a two page spread we were also on the cover! We are so grateful to the editor, Michell Champ, for graciously helping us and caring so much about foster children in the Lowcounty!

This was our first time featured in a print publication and it is incredible to know that it was delivered to every South of Broad resident in Charleston.

Here is the article:

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Birthdays For All was featured in a local Newsletter and Website that goes to nearly 4000 people!! Macaroni kids has great calendars of upcoming events and things of interest to locals. Lisa Beyorek was kind enough to feature an article about us in their latest newsletter. The article is about what you and your family can do to help us help local foster children.

You can read the whole article here.

This has been an awesome week for Birthdays For All. This week we received an amazing offer from a member of Coastal Community Church. She has generously offered to spearhead a “giving balloon tree” for the month of September birthdays!

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When we started Birthdays For All, we hit the ground running by setting up a website, telling our friends and family about it, started raising a bit of money, and went out to get presents. Before long we had a room full of presents in our house ready to wrap for the Foster children with birthdays in June. I don’t think we really thought about how much time and work it would take to actually hand wrap all the presents, write all the birthday cards, and put them all in nice bags. Luckily for me, most of my time was taken up by my day job and working on this website. So poor Steffi had to spend many days and hours doing it all by herself, and on top of that, had to stop our kids from constantly trying to unwrap them.

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Yesterday was a big day for Birthdays For All. It was our first time giving presents to Charleston County DSS for the children in Intensive Foster Care. There were 12 registered children with birthdays in June and we wanted to get presents for them all, but as our organization is so new there wasn’t time for the caseworkers to get the wishlists from the children. Instead, we bought things which we thought they would love.

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Charleston County has 283 more foster children than homes to place them. This means the majority of local foster children are living in group homes, not the usual family type of foster care. If you are unable to become a foster parent then please do what you can to help by mentoring a child or donating to Birthdays to All. 100% of donations go to gifts for the foster children.

Help us bring awareness of the needs of foster children this month, share this post and invite your friends to like our Facebook page.

When Steffi told me that she wanted to start a nonprofit called Birthdays For All, a lightbulb turned on in my head. She didn’t really need to say much else, because I was already sold.

My first thought was a flashback to our daughter Olivia’s birthday parties over the years. We always wanted her to feel like she was the most important, special, and loved girl in the world on her birthday. We would put plenty of time and effort into making it happen. So the idea of Birthdays For All resonated with me. Why can’t all kids feel the same on their birthdays? The truth is that there are a lot of kids who aren’t as fortunate.

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