Treehouse

http://www.treehouse4kids.org/

Hello again, people of Queen Coolio's realm! I'm in a helpy mood, so as well as making you feel bad about people who need help in my Kids for Kiva blogette, I want to tell you about Treehouse. Treehouse isn't a loaning website. In fact, it's not really about the website at all, but since it has one I am now officially pressuring you to check it out. PEER PRESSURE!!!!!

Anyway, Treehouse is a non-for-profit organization that supports foster kids and helps them lead a normal life. Treehouse has a lot of programs that it offers, so I will tell you about a few that I like and then about how I found them.

There's the Wearhouse, where foster kids can shop several times a year for new and like-new clothing, shoes, school supplies, books, toys, bikes and other essentials that help them feel good and fit in. Leaving home means losing everything – clothing, toys, family photos – and starting over from scratch. For foster parents, it means trying to outfit a growing child with the $300 per year the state provides for clothing (that’s less than half of what an average family spends).

Treehouse helps with that and with other things like tutoring, because suddenly arriving at a new school where the other kids have already almost mastered a certain math rule, or knows the parts of speech by heart while having been learning something entirely different at another school can be really confusing to catch up on. Treehouse helps by placing certified teachers in public schools to provide foster kids with essential tutoring in basic skills. They also offer after-school drop-in tutoring at the Treehouse Learning Center, as well as Summer Academy and other school break programs. I was recently informed that I could be able to tutor kids if I wanted to, now.

Another AWESOME program Treehouse offers is Little Wishes. Imagine earning the grades to graduate but missing out on graduation because you can’t afford a cap and gown. Or dropping out of sports or the school band because you can’t pay your fees or buy a uniform. Treehouse's Little Wishes program provides funds for the activities that every child deserves to explore and enjoy. Little Wishes helps big dreams come true.

Treehouse is so great, here's how I got involved. At a ZooTunes concert. Yep. They had a stand there, and they were making these paper flowers, which I thought were really cool, so I made a bunch and kept one and put the others up around the tent thingy. Then I was making one, and a family came up. The dad was talking to the volunteer at the booth but the kids wanted to make flowers, so the volunteer asked me to show them how. I had so much fun, I stayed and showed others how to make the flowers, and the next time I did the same. Then the volunteer had to use the bathroom and left me in charge of the booth. It was great! I'm so excited I can finally do something that directly affects the kids, like tutoring, so check out Treehouse, and get involved!