Foster families facing unique challenges helped by annual initiative to make holiday season special
Youth Villages’ annual holiday campaign wraps for the season with a record-breaking year.
NASHVILLE, Tenn. (WSMV) - Youth Villages wrapped up their annual Holiday Heroes campaign. In 2024 they set a new record, making sure nearly 3,000 foster kids had gifts to open on Christmas morning.
One of those foster families told WSMV4 that it can be challenging to foster but there is support out there to help them manage.
The Gills have been foster parents for about eight years. They have three biological children, two adopted and four foster kids.
Dominique Gill shared that, “Having a lot of kids it’s a whole lot of Christmas lists.”
The Gills wanted to make sure each of their kids had something to open Christmas morning.
“We have nine kids and everybody gets a minimum of seven presents a piece so that math was like crazy.”
When they first started as foster parents, they realized it comes with its own set of challenges.
“We really thought that it was like oh yeah sure these kids are going to love us, they’re going to come in and just like ‘thank you for taking us’ but no we got faced with reality real fast.”
They said they quickly learned every child’s situation is different and every child may need something different.
“They’re coming from broken homes, sad and they just want structure so we kind of had to pivot and move around what we wanted to do for them.”
On top of the financial component, it can be a lot, especially during the holiday season. The Gills say that’s where the Youth Villages Holiday Heroes initiative comes in.
“It could be challenging but there’s support.”
With Holiday Heroes, volunteers donated money or bought gifts for foster children.
“They [Youth Villages] did a lot they got them everything that they asked for down to football gloves and bicycles.”
With all those gifts, Dominique Gills said it can be exhausting but seeing the smiles is worth it.
“Kevin and I didn’t go to sleep until 5 a.m. from wrapping up everybody’s presents...at least over 70 gifts for our kids and then they woke up at 7 a.m. As a parent it makes me feel good because we want everybody to get what they want every Christmas having a lot of kids is sometimes hard to do because it’s a lot of things that they want so being able to see them happy and get what they wanted on Christmas day makes us feel really good.”
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