A Heartfelt Thank You

Every year we are humbled by the generosity of our donors and volunteers. We just wrapped up a very busy holiday season where EVERY Villages’ child, youth and family who requested assistance received support; our older youth, kinship care families, and foster families celebrated holidays thanks to generous sponsors; and our friends and donors were very generous as they financially supported our mission. We recently received a note from one of our families that we wanted to share with you about how grateful they are for the amazing Christmas they had thanks to one of our donors:

I don’t know where to begin. This year [2012] was one of the hardest our family every experienced. A couple of years ago my husband lost his job and had to take another one working below the level he used to work at and for less money. It’s been a struggle but we made it work. Early this year a young boy was placed in our home and while we’ve helped lots of kids during our four years of fostering, this child was the most difficult we’ve ever had. He had a lot of behavioral and emotional problems on top of a few medical conditions that seem to make things worse. He fought us at every turn, but thankfully with the help of our Villages case manager we made a lot of progress with him. But around Thanksgiving he started acting out worse than before and that’s when we discovered that he was take away from his parents at Christmas and he doesn’t like the holidays because of the memory. My husband and I wanted to give him a great holiday but we weren’t sure where to start. We ask The Villages for help and what they did was amazing. They found a donor who pulled out all the stops. I had never seen so many gifts before. They provided food too. I was speechless. On Christmas morning our foster son woke up and saw gifts that filled our entire living room and he was shocked. Then we had a meal with some of his favorite foods. That night when I was tucking him in he said to me “this was the best Christmas ever”. Since the holiday he’s been a completely different boy. He’s been happy and carefree like little boys should. Thank you so much for everything you’ve done to help our family.

This is just one of the many joyful stories The Villages receives every year. We are able to provide camperships, tutoring classes, birthday gifts, and much more every day thanks to people like you! We are humbled every day by the generosity our friends show us. Thank you to everyone who helped make the holidays.

Adoption Training

The Villages is pleased to announce that we have been awarded a grant from The Center for Adoption Support and Education, to provide Clinical Adoption Competent Adoption Training (TAC) to licensed mental health professionals, providing them with the knowledge skills and values they need to provide adoption competent mental health services.


TAC is a standardized, manualized curriculum developed in collaboration with national experts in the field of child welfare, adoption and mental health and rigorously evaluated at the University of Maryland School of Social Work. A 13-session instruction program (a total of 78 hours of instruction) engages students in clinical knowledge and skill building, followed by monthly group clinical case consultation sessions over a 6-month period.

Topical Areas Include:

• Clinical and Ethical Issues in Planning, Preparing for and Supporting Adoption
• Clinical Issues in Providing Therapeutic Services: Grief, Loss, Separation and Identity
• Trauma and Brain Neurobiology
• Clinical Issues in Providing Therapeutic Services: Attachment
• Adoptive Family Formation, Integration and Developmental Stages
• Openness in Adoption and Birth Family Culture
• Race and Ethnicity

The Villages’ expert trainers, Alfreda Singleton Smith and Jill Budnick, are excited to announce that the first training class is scheduled to begin in February, 2013. There is limited space still available for this training. If you are interested in participating please call Alfreda Singleton Smith or Kimberlee Cottingham at 317-775-6500.

Pack The House for Charity

We hope you’ll join us for Pack the House for Charity on Saturday, March 2nd! Proceeds from this special event with the Indiana Ice will help support the children, youth, and families served by The Villages, Prevent Child Abuse Indiana, and Dads, Inc. Over the last five years, with the help of generous donors like you, we’ve raised over $35,000 from Pack the House which helped to support our life-changing programs and services. This year, we ask you to join The Villages team as we “Pack the House” and raise much needed money to support the children and families we are privileged to serve!


Tickets start at just $11 and group packages start at only $300! At least five dollars of every ticket The Villages sells will fund our life-changing programs and services. This support will ensure that we not only SERVE the over 1,400 children we work with daily, but ENRICH their lives. With your support, we’ll be able to provide a tutor to a child who is struggling to keep up with her peers at school; help assure a youth who is aging out of foster care will be able to live independently on his own; and that parents who are expecting their first child will have the support they need to be the best parents possible!

We know there are many organizations worthy of your support, and today we are asking you to support The Villages by purchasing tickets this important event! Click this link to purchase your tickets today! We appreciate your generous support and look forward to seeing you at Pack the House for Charity on Saturday, March 2nd.