Promise686 equips churches and families to meet the needs of orphans and children in foster care. We provide financial assistance for adoption, educational resources for individuals and churches, volunteer support for foster families. Our goal is to raise awareness and educate church communities and reduce barriers to adopting and fostering lonely children, with the desire that more children will be nurtured in loving families. Answering God's call to "set the lonely in families" (Psalm 68:6), we believe churches and their families are the key to unlocking the current crisis in child welfare.
Services To Churches
In 2013, we launched our foster care strategy (livethepromise.org) with the initial goal of recruiting 100 new foster families in Georgia. Live The Promise is an ever growing movement in churches whose mission is carried out through trained lay leaders (Advocates) who train and organize passionate volunteers to serve foster families. This strategy involves forming partnerships between local churches, private child placing agencies, and Division of Family and Children Services. Churches are equipped to raise up and support at least one new foster family. (In late 2016, Promise686 reached its goal of 100 new foster families along with working with 100 church partners!) Our work continues in Georgia and beyond as we are increasingly sought after for our proven methodology and training materials from churches and affiliates across the United States.
Adopting families who are active church members living in the state of Georgia are eligible to apply for our two adoption grant offerings, greatly reducing the financial burden of adoption, allowing more families to bring a waiting child home to a "forever family."
Services to Adoptive Families
Our adoption matching grants and legal grants reduce the financial barrier to adoption. The matching grant program also encourages community-building for the adoptive family as families reach out within their network for support. Our legal grant program assists families to complete the legal aspects of their adoption such as domestication of a foreign adoption.
Promise686 has an adoption mentoring program in which volunteers who have previously adopted are paired with adopting families. Adoptions have unique challenges and pairing those who have adopted with adopting families provides practical and emotional support.
We also offer seminars, support groups, and an annual social gathering designed to address the unique needs of adoptive families. These offerings also provide adoptive families with a forum to connect with other families like themselves.
Services to Foster Families
Promise686 believes that ongoing tangible and emotional support is the key to foster family success. Care Communities consist of volunteers who are assigned to a particular foster family who are committed to providing meals, childcare, or other practical help to that foster family. Foster families who are surrounded by a Care Community are able to serve more children over longer periods of time and provide a higher quality environment for foster children.
