5 Ways You Can Support Foster Children (Foster Parenting Not Required)
When people begin to understand the realities many children in foster care face—frequent moves, uncertainty, and, too often, carrying their belongings in trash bags—the response is often the same: I want to help. I just don’t know how.
Fostering or adopting is one way to make a difference, but it’s not the only way. There are many ways to show up for foster children, and most of them start right where you are.
Here are five of them.
1. Donate a Bag
It sounds simple because it is. Too many children in foster care still transport their belongings in trash bags as they move from place to place. It's a small detail with an enormous emotional cost. A proper bag gives a child something to call their own while restoring a sense of ownership and dignity that a trash bag cannot.
At My Bag My Story, every dollar donated goes directly toward providing a quality bag to a child in the foster care system. If you're looking for the most direct way to make an immediate impact, this is it.
2. Become a Monthly Donor for My Bag My Story
One-time gifts are wonderful, but recurring support is what enables an organization like My Bag My Story to plan, grow, and consistently reach more children. When you become a monthly donor, you are committing to showing up for foster children every single month.
Even a small monthly gift adds up to create real impact. It helps provide high-quality bags to children in foster care and moves us closer to a day when no child has to carry their belongings in a trash bag.
3. Partner With Your Business, Community Center, or Church
Partnering with your local businesses, community centers, and/or churches is a great way to spread awareness of My Bag My Story and, in turn, affect the foster care system at every level of the community.
Organizations like Church of the City, one of our Dignity Partners, demonstrate the impact collection action can have in our communities. Through partnerships with organizations that serve children in foster care, My Bag My Story helps ensure that the children they support receive a high-quality bag they can call their own.
When workplaces, congregations, and community groups come together around a shared purpose, they help restore dignity and hope in a tangible way. If your organization is looking for a meaningful way to support children in foster care, this is a natural place to start. Reach out to learn how a partnership could take shape in your community.
4. Become a Mentor
Supporting children in foster care doesn’t always mean you have to become a foster parent or supply tangible items. According to a 2024 landscape study by Belmont University, one of the most consistent findings in research on foster care outcomes shows the impact of a stable, caring adult relationship in the life of a child in foster care. Mentoring a young person or teenager in foster care can make a significant difference in their lives.
Children who have a mentor, or simply someone who shows up consistently and believes in them, are significantly more likely to finish school, find stable employment, and avoid homelessness after aging out of the system.
Organizations like Big Brothers Big Sisters and local CASA programs are always looking for mentors. It's a commitment of time, not expertise, and the impact is lasting.
5. Spread the Word
Don’t underestimate the power of awareness. Most people have no idea that children in foster care travel with trash bags, nor do they understand what happens to youth who age
out of the system without support. Advocating on social media, in conversation, or by passing along a My Bag My Story post may plant a seed that leads others to act.
Follow My Bag My Story on social media, share our mission with your network, and help us reach the people who are ready to help but just haven't found us yet.
Whether you become a donor, partner with organizations like My Bag My Story, or share the message of foster care reform, those small steps can help you be part of the effort to make things better. The children in the foster care system need a whole community behind them, and there is a role in that community for you.
Ready to take your first step? Start here.