National Foster Care Day is the first Tuesday in May— May 6 this year.
For Hunter Beaton, every day is foster care day. Beaton, disturbed that foster children showed up at adoptive homes carrying all their possessions in trash bags, used his 2016 Eagle Scout project to offer some measure of dignity for them.
He raised $10,000 and filled 100 duffel bags to give to Texas foster kids.
When requests for duffels kept pouring in, Beaton knew he had found his lifelong mission. He started the nonprofit Day 1 Bags, which has since delivered 224,000 bags in 47 states and drove 2023 legislation in Texas requiring the state to maintain a supply of proper luggage for foster youths.
Beaton said in 2018, when we first wrote about the Bandera Electric Cooperative member, after his parents adopted 3 foster children, “They had all their possessions in a black trash bag. How awful is that? I decided to find a way to say, ‘No, no kid deserves this.’ ”
To help Beaton in his mission, go to the Day 1 Bags website.