>> My name is Maria Patrocus [assumed spelling] and I am the program and volunteer manager
with the Foundation for Foster Children
and that is a private non-profit organization specific to Orlando.
We privately fundraise so we don't rely on any kind of government funding, or government grants
and the money we raise goes back to the foster kids [inaudible] County.
We have a pretty large population of foster children in the area and we provide funding
for tutoring, dance classes, sports, field trips, graduation photos, things like that.
The main part of my role is reviewing requests for funding.
I've only been in my position officially like seven months now
so I can't even give you an average of how many requests we receive a month
but I get requests every week for tutoring for birthday cakes and gifts
and my main role is reviewing those requests.
We almost always approve them and finding the relationships to set up tutoring to set
up dance classes and making sure that the kids actually start cause sometimes we'll get
requests and then we don't know when the kids start the activity that we're offering to find.
So we do have a large fundraising event.
It's our annual shake a tour fashion show.
We always have a keynote speaker who has some kind
of relationship with the foster care system.
Recently, it's been adults who grew up in foster care, which is great and it's a pull
at the heart strings kind of thing and we invite personally invite anywhere between two
and three hundred and fifty people.
So it's a private event and we usually invite those who we know are going to give
and we that's where the bulk of our funding comes from
and it all goes toward our programs and maintaining our programs.