On December 2nd our Girl’s Group had a chance to celebrate the Christmas season in style.

Even though it was a frigid evening, we had 15 young women come out to start off the evening with a horsedrawn carriage ride around Old Town. The ride ended up at Canino’s Italian Restaurant, where the group was treated to a 3-course spaghetti dinner, complete with gelato for a perfect finish.

This was a special way to end the year for our Girl's Group. This monthly group is an important time for our girls to be able to get together, build relationships, and broaden their horizons with new experiences.

Thanks so much to Colorado Carriage and Wagon and Canino’s Italian Restaurant for making this special evening possible!

Last Wednesday, we got together for our November Family Dinner, also known as our Thanksgiving Feast.

Once a month, we host a dinner for youth in our program and their guests. This is a time to just come to the house and have a tasty family style meal prepared by wonderful volunteers in a comfortable space. Each of our youth can bring along family, friends, a mentor – whoever they would like to spend the evening with. Sometimes after dinner there's a card game, charades, or an outdoor activity, sometimes just hanging out and talking.

This month, in honor of Thanksgiving, Ken Smith, one of our Board members and a professor in CSU's Restaurant and Resort Management program, organized a group of his students to prepare a traditional Thanksgiving meal of turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes, veggies and topped off with delicious pie.

About 50 youth, staff, volunteers, family and mentors descended on the house for a festive evening of giving thanks!

Periodically, groups from the community come alongside the Matthews House to plan and put on events for our youth. These are great, fun activities for our youth with the added invaluable benefit that they are done on a completely volunteer basis by people who share this community with our youth. No ulterior motives, no one getting paid, these are people who genuinely care about our community and our youth. This unconditional compassion has a huge impact on our youth. For them to recognize that there are people in their community who want to invest time in them not because there’s a monetary incentive, but because there’s a true belief in the value and potential of each individual regardless of past events or circumstances. This is incredibly powerful for many of our youth who have seldom had anyone really believe in them.

This summer, a group from Emmaus Road Church came to the Matthews House to hang out with kids and provide a BBQ meal. This group got to know some of our youth through conversation and some games of bocce ball.

We’d like to thank Andy & Amy Lucas, Marie Evans, Ken Snyder and Wendy Thompson from Emmaus Road for their time and compassion and of course the food they brought to grill out

Thanks also to the following Matthews House volunteers for adding a collection of sides and dessert to provide quite a nice spread of food for the afternoon!

Doreen Miller, Tina Morris, Linda Maher, Gail Follett, Cathy Rotman, Christine Christman, Kelly Mapes, Denise Thompson, Vickie Mitchell, Courtney Craig and Denise Birdsall

You may be familiar with Realities for Children, if not you’ll want to be – trust me.

Realities for Children is a cause marketing and promotional company that provides a unique opportunity for local businesses to gain marketing benefits, including special marketing rates, greater visibility, referral networking, and positive name association, while meeting the needs of abused and neglected children in Larimer County. By bringing together a large number of business members they are able to offer member-businesses an amazing return on investment while making a huge impact on our community by providing funding for emergency needs, education, sponsorship support and special activities for at-risk children and youth.

So why am I talking about Realities for Children on the Matthews House blog? Well, I realized you may not know that The Matthews House is a Realities for Children affiliate agency and I also realized that even if you do know that, you might not know what it means. I can tell you that it means a lot to our youth, directly and indirectly.

As an affiliate agency we are able to apply for emergency funding when there are no resources available elsewhere to meet a need. The Realities for Children Emergency Fund creates a safety net for children and youth who would otherwise fall through the cracks. This partnership with Realities has allowed immediate needs such as emergency shelter to be met for our youth.

Realities also meets the needs of our youth indirectly through event sponsorship. By signing on as the Presenting Sponsor for our upcoming Cultivate Hope fundraiser, Realities for Children is underwriting the cost of putting on the event so that all the money that comes in can go directly to helping the youth the Matthews House exists to serve. That means that when you buy a ticket to Cultivate Hope, all $25 is going to help youth develop the support network and skills they need to be successful and self-sufficient. And when you bid and win a beautiful piece of garden art at the event, you can know that the money doesn’t get absorbed into the cost of food or printing but goes directly to our program and youth in need.

If you are a business owner or an employee of a community-minded business, please look into Realities for Children to see how they can help you to leverage your marketing dollars while helping Larimer County’s children.

Please join us for Cultivate Hope, coming up on May 7th at 6:30pm. Tickets and Info available on our website.

On President’s Day several youth, volunteers and staff were about to head up to Rocky Mountain National Park for a day of snowshoeing. The group was given a quick lesson in snowshoeing “how to’s” from our volunteers and then we were all off. After some trial and error learning how to walk in the shoes, we began our trek. The group got along very well and everyone seemed to have an excellent time, especially sliding down our makeshift snow slide. It was not only a good opportunity for staff and volunteers to get to know the youth better, but also for the youth to socialize with their peers in a positive, fun environment and to build confidence by experiencing something new.

Once a month we plan an activity especially for the young women in our program. Sometimes we hang out, eat popcorn and watch a chick flick or head out to try out our bowling skills. Other months we might encourage creative expression by learning some journalling techniques or taking on an art project. The idea is to provide a safe place to build relationships and to give our young women a chance to learn and try some new things in a comfortable environment.

Last month, we spent the evening at the Matthews House enjoying a chance to relax and learn to take better care of ourselves.  Alia, a Certified Massage Therapist from Capelli’s Salon & Spa, brought information for each of the girls on relaxation techniques, healthy eating, exercise and positive self-talk. We were able to continue to build relationships and have some good conversations about taking care of ourselves in simple and practical ways. Each of the girls was able to enjoy a relaxing chair massage and went home with a CD of peaceful music and a bag of marbles that we learned to use for a foot massage.

Thanks so much to Alia for sharing her knowledge, time and expertise with our young women!

This slideshow of postcards made by alumni of the foster care system showed up in my mailbox recently and I feel it needs to be shared. These simple postcards are able to convey the complex feelings and experiences of many youth in foster care and to shed light on what it might be like to grow up in foster care for those who haven’t been there and find it difficult to imagine.

Like I said, I thought it needed to be shared. Please take a minute to check it out, I think you’ll be glad you did.

This national community art project is an undertaking of Foster Care Alumni of America and is intended to build (the foster care alumni) community at the same time we educate foster care professionals and providers, and the general public, about our culture.

As the alumni movement has grown and gained momentum, we have discovered that regardless of age, race, ethnicity, geography, education, occupation, or placement history, as alumni of the foster care system we have a great deal in common. Our shared experiences form the basis of a shared culture-the culture of foster care. We are exploring the culture of foster care through our community art project where people in and from foster care share their observations, insights, and lessons on postcards.

Foster Care Alumni of America is a national non-profit association that has been founded and is led by alumni of the foster care system. We use the term alumni to describe those of us who have been in foster care during our childhood/youth.

The mission of FCAA is to connect the alumni community and to transform foster care policy and practice, ensuring opportunity for people in and from foster care.

*all italicized type is taken directly from the FCAA website

Yesterday in the Coloradoan, there was an editorial from one of our youth, talking about his mentor and what that relationship has meant in his life. So if you want to hear a firsthand, heartfelt account of the power of mentoring, check out Glen’s mentoring testimonial.

January 22, 2009
4:00pm – 6:00pm

The Reader’s Cove
1001 E Harmony Rd # C
Fort Collins, CO 80525

The Larimer County Mentoring Coalition consists of six mentoring agencies committed to raising awareness of the need for mentors, and to recruiting and retaining high quality mentors for children and young adults in Larimer County.

Agencies in the Coalition:

The Matthews House
Volunteers of America
Boys and Girls Clubs of Larimer County
Larimer County Human Services, Children Youth & Family Division
Partners Mentoring Youth of Larimer County
Turning Point Center for Youth and Family Development

About once a month our girls get together for an evening just to hang out and participate in some kind of fun activity. Often a mentor or other community member shares a skill or hobby, like journaling or cutting hair and sometimes its a simply a time to get out together and have fun, bowling, watching a movie or visiting a corn maze. December of course, was a chance to celebrate Christmas. We gathered to decorate the Matthews House and make some tasty cookies and gingerbread houses. Much fun was had by all and some impressive houses were created.