November 2023 | Volume 1 | Issue 1 | www.embrella.org
Welcome to the first issue of our newsletter, Otterly embrella!
We’re excited to share with you information about the different projects we’re involved in. We hope you feel more connected to us as a nonprofit serving children and families with experience with foster and kinship care. We invite you to reach out with any questions you may have. You can connect with us through email at communications@embrella.org or by calling us at 609.520.1500.
From the CEO
Preparing in the Present to Secure a Better Future
A committee of embrella’s board of directors and staff invested their time and effort in 2022 to exploring the changing landscape of child welfare, as well as our organizational work environment and culture, to plan for the future.
This strategic planning process was led by the Catalyst Consulting Group and included surveys, interviews, and a SWOT market & risk assessment analysis that were presented to the committee in an overall landscape analysis. Equipped with this information, there was then a full day retreat and working groups of staff and board members to develop goals and objectives.
I want to thank all of you who provided crucial input through the interviews and surveys and share an overview of the results from this process. We will continue to share our progress as we move through our specific goals and objectives as well as reach out to all of our stakeholders for feedback and guidance.
Mission: To embrace, support, and advocate for children, youth, and families within the child welfare community.
Vision: A future where all children, youth, and families are safe, stable, and nurtured.
Organizational Values
- Empathy. We cultivate empathetic relationships with our children, youth, and families.
- Integrity. We lead with integrity and take accountability for our impact.
- Respect. We respect our children, youth, and families as thought partners that are in control of their future.
- Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Belonging. We acknowledge and respect people’s differences.
- Support. We support our children, youth, and families’ goals by working alongside them, every step of the way.
Strategic Priorities
- Staff: People first. The embrella staff are critical to program execution and mission advancement. With a fast-paced job market, embrella must remain competitive and continually adapt to meet the evolving needs of their workforce. Workplace culture is also critical to staff retention and satisfaction.
- Programming: Most of embrella’s programs are currently funded through state contracts. This limits the organization’s ability to innovate and scale programs that don’t receive state funding. Programming efforts will focus on expanding service groups, increasing programming accessibility and reach, and further committing to policy advocacy in support of its clients and the sector.
- Development: embrella is primarily reliant on state funding for program development and implementation. The first steps at revenue diversification have begun but the organization is still at the beginning stages of that journey. To successfully move towards other funding sources, embrella must increase brand awareness, curate new networks, and expand its giving campaign efforts.
- Governance: The board is a critical component of embrella’s success. Developing a bench of leadership within the board will ensure continued growth and sustainability for the organization. Increased interactions between board and staff members will cultivate an environment of collaboration and accountability.
Delivering Holiday Cheer with
our Annual Toy Pop-Up Shops
Through the generous donations of our community partners, embrella will again host 3 holiday pop-up shops in Princeton, Hammonton, and Paterson this December. This is the second year we will be able to offer Southern and Northern NJ locations in addition to our Princeton office site.
The registration form is live! Our current presumptive and licensed foster and kinship families should have received an email and a post card with directions on how to register. If you have any questions, please contact your Family Support Advocate.
Last year, we were excited to see 206 families participate with 570 children and youth receiving gifts through this event. We were also able to provide toys to 8 Child Protection and Permanency (CP&P) Local Offices to distribute toys to the families they work with.
We would like to give a huge THANK YOU to the New Jersey Police Benevolent Association (NJ PBA), for collecting and delivering toys and gifts to be given at our pop-up shops.
If you would like to help us deliver holiday cheer to even more families this year through a monetary or in-kind donation, please follow this link or contact us at development@embrella.org.
embrella’s Family Support Advocates Are Here to Help!
Our Family Support Advocates (FSA’s) are working diligently with their area Child Protection and Permanency (CP&P) offices to assist those who care for our young people.
Children and youth who are entering care may have to join multiple families on their journey. This in turn reduces the stability that all children and young people deserve.
Our FSA’s are putting their advocacy and support skills to the test as they work to ensure that these families are prepared and supported to enhance stability for our young people.
Are you a resource parent or kinship caregiver that hasn’t worked with your Family Support Advocate yet? Come to their next Connecting Families Meeting where you can also meet local caregivers! You can find and contact your FSA directly by clicking here.
Visit our calendar for meetings, webinars, and trainings for licensed resource parents and kinship caregivers. If you would like to reach someone in the Support Department, please email Support@embrella.org.
A Dedicated Team Ready to
Assist Adolescents in Care
The Scholarship Department here at embrella is aimed at assisting adolescents in the next phase of their lives. They facilitate the New Jersey Foster Care (NJFC) Scholars Program as well as Regions 2 and 3 of NJ’s Pathways to Academic and Career Exploration to Success (PACES) Program.
This year the Scholarship Department facilitated embrella’s private scholarships and grants, distributing $30,000 to high school seniors just beginning their secondary education and vocational training journeys.
High school seniors and 2023 GED/HSE recipients were encouraged to apply for embrella’s private scholarship and opportunity grants. This program offers privately funded awards for youth who are or were in foster care, were adopted, or have entered Kinship Legal Guardianship (KLG) through the Division of Child Protection and Permanency (CP&P) in New Jersey.
These awards are separated into two distinctions: Academic Scholarships, which can be used for college tuition and supplies, and Opportunity Grants which are allotted to assist youth with the next phase of their life, including additional training, trade or vocational school, and/or independent living.
Some of the NJFC and PACES qualifications are listed below. If you believe you, a youth in your care, or an adolescent you work with may be eligible for one of these programs, please reach out to our Scholarship Department at Scholarships@embrella.org or click here to meet our NJFC Scholarship and PACES Coach team.
New Jersey Foster Care Scholars Program
The New Jersey Foster Care Scholars Program provides financial assistance to eligible foster, adoptive, kinship and homeless youth seeking a post-secondary education. Wondering if a youth is eligible? Check out the eligibility requirements here.
The NJFC application for the Spring 2024 semester will go live December 1st*, while the application for the 2024-25 academic year will go live April 1st.
The applications can be found at the following links:
New Student: https://www.embrella.org/njfc-new-student-application/
Returning Student: https://www.embrella.org/njfc-returning-application/
*If you were already approved for NJFC Scholars for the Fall 2023 semester, you do NOT need to submit a reapplication for Spring 2024.
The application for the 2024-2025 school year will go live in March.
Pathways to Academic and Career Exploration to Success (PACES) Program
The PACES Program focuses on adolescents’ educational and employment development, as coaches assist each adolescent in decision-making processes, soft skill development, and direct assistance during the college application and job application processes. The PACES program is available all throughout the state – embrella facilitates Regions 2 & 3 consisting of Hunterdon, Somerset, Middlesex, Mercer, Monmouth, and Ocean Counties.
Each CP&P local office has a list of youth eligible for the PACES program. Eligible youth must have an open case and be referred to the program through their caseworker.
Who Tells Your Story?
Our mission at embrella is to embrace, support, and advocate for children, youth, and families within the child welfare community. We see ourselves as the storytellers of New Jersey’s foster, adoptive, and kinship families. Our Communications Department strives to ensure that your voice is being heard.
The Future is Family is a video series devoted to telling the powerful stories of our youth and families that are making efforts to change the landscape of their lives everyday.
Meet the Boys, An Adoption Story is a special 2 part series that has garnered over 1 million views! This courageous family let us into their world and trusted us to share their emotional journey with you. We recently caught up with them and were able to witness how the boys are thriving in the next stage of their lives. We continue their adventure with Meet the Boys, An Adoption Story – Part 2.
We have also been fortunate to meet Sophia, a young adult that became increasingly aware of how experiences of neglect and abuse at a young age led to a creative outlet of storytelling through illustration. Sophia – Part 1 and Sophia – Part 2 are available to view in our Future is Family collection.
Don’t miss our most recent installment, Julianna – Foster Care, Adoption, and Beyond, where we learn how Julianna entered an exciting, yet foreign, world, and found ways to honor her past and culture.
We invite you to visit our YouTube channel for more video content, as well as our podcast, What The Foster?
If you are interested in sharing your story with embrella, and possibly being contacted about being featured, please visit this link to submit your information.
You can find our social media links at the bottom of this newsletter. Follow us for more content and to see whose story we’re telling next!
Reaching New Heights
With Your Continued Support
The Development Department, which oversees embrella’s private fundraising and programming, is having its biggest year on record! Our wish granting and college scholarship efforts grew exponentially, as both the need among families and the generosity of our amazing donors multiplied.
In 2022, embrella’s Fostering Wishes and Dreamers & Believers programs increased the maximum award amounts to ensure children seeking confidence-boosting experiences can continue their journeys despite difficult economic changes.
Over $80,000 in wish grants sent 228 children in care to summer camps, dance and sports lessons, music classes, and once-in-a-lifetime events through Dreamers & Believers, while Fostering Wishes provided the necessary art supplies, dance shoes, and sports equipment to participate in these activities.
The private scholarship department also expanded, adding The Homestretch Scholarship, our first for current college students, providing $5,000 each annually to 6 young people to ensure they complete their college degrees.
While nationally, only 3% of former foster children will earn a college degree, at embrella, up to 12% of our students do. We are aiming to dramatically increase that number through the assistance of PACES, NJFC, private scholarships, and educational support grants!
If you would like to donate to embrella’s Private Scholarships to help our youth achieve their dreams, please follow this link.
This growth simply would not be possible without the continual support of our Board of Trustees and donors, especially our monthly Dream Makers. New grants from Amazon, Fenwick Law Firm, LLC, Houston Family Foundation, and Famous Footwear were also instrumental in supporting our foster children and families to thrive and succeed. We look forward to welcoming new partners this year to help us embrace all of New Jersey’s foster and adoptive families!
The following video gives a brief explanation of how some of your donations are used and what still needs to be done to assist children in care to lead more positive and fulfilling lives.
Enhancing Efforts to Ensure a
Culture of Diversity, Equity,
Inclusion & Belonging
Since the Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Belonging (DEIB) committee’s efforts began in 2021, they’ve been hard at work examining the embrella workplace and determining how we can aim to achieve more in this area.
The committee understands the importance of DEIB in any workplace, but especially at embrella, where the populations we serve are members of marginalized communities, and we must be transparent in our support of their identities and experiences.
Examples of the efforts of this commitment are many. The committee crafted surveys to gather a sense of staff experience of diversity, equity, and inclusion at embrella, and to reinforce the idea that staff voices matter in embrella’s policymaking.
A Mission & Vision Statement was created for Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Belonging, which is located on our website, so that families, organizations, and other individuals can easily access and understand our perspective on DEIB.
The committee has pushed for more inclusive training for staff and board members. Training is important to expose individuals to ideas they may not need to consider daily. Such exposure can work to unseat unconscious bias and shift the way individuals interact with the world. It is particularly important for these biases to be shifted in the minds of an organization’s leaders.
The committee has also helped update the wording in embrella’s policies, tagline, and interview questions to better align with our DEIB statement. These changes to policy are vital, as policy plays a crucial role in shaping an organization.
We look forward to sharing our efforts as we work toward our goals and initiatives this year!
An idea that started as a bridge to join our annual Kinship and Passport to Education (P2E) conferences has led to one of our most successful events to date!
The First Community Kinnection Networking Conference was held on September 9th in New Brunswick, NJ and we couldn’t have asked for a better turnout. Over 100 caregivers, youth, CP&P staff, and exhibitors were in attendance to share and learn from presenters through various workshops and networking experiences.
Linking adolescents, young adults, and caregivers with resources to support them, the CKN Conference offered many avenues for education and exploration.
We are so grateful for the heartfelt sentiments that have been shared with us and continue to be received. One caregiver shared the following reaction: “This conference surpassed my expectations. It was a pleasure meeting some young ladies that aged out of Foster Care and are doing well. I was educated today. Thank You.”
Thank you to everyone that participated in this year’s CKN Conference. Please view the video below that shows some highlights from the day!
Wanted: Ambassadors
to support
embrella’s vision!
Could it be you?
The embrella Ambassador Council is an energetic group of New Jersey and New York professionals dedicated to advancing our mission to embrace and support foster children and their families through fundraising, volunteering, and peer-to-peer networking.
We are seeking Ambassadors who want to volunteer, socialize, and network for a great cause!
In July 2022, embrella began the process of incorporating an already successfully established program to assist children entering care.
The Bag Project was created in 2016 by it’s founder, Anupa Wijaya, and is rooted in her passion to help children in crisis and provide them with comfort and dignity.
It’s what all children deserve but unfortunately not what all experience. The purpose of The Bag Project is to make the transition to a safer place a little easier by providing children and youth who find themselves in unfamiliar situations with familiar items.
Through emergency duffel bags and activity backpacks, essential and comfort items such as soap, shampoo, a toothbrush and toothpaste, as well as a blanket and toy or stuffed animal, are placed in each bag which are then distributed through local CP&P offices and nonprofits serving vulnerable or underserved youth.
We are proud to announce that embrella has distributed over 800 bags since September 2022, in addition to the 1,000’s of bags Anupa gave during her time as The Bag Project CEO!
This program is made possible through generous donations, both monetary and in-kind, and hours given by our volunteers and sponsors. If you would like to learn more about our children’s programs, click the button below!
Board Spotlight:
Meet Maria!
Maria Longo has been serving on the embrella Board of Directors for the past 5 years. She has served in leadership as Treasurer and is in her first year as Board Chair. She spends countless hours volunteering at our Toy Drive Pop Up Shops, at Family Events, and as the coordinator of our Tricky Tray fundraisers, seeking donations, putting together baskets, and much more. The Tricky Tray is an embrella event you don’t want to miss!
When she’s not volunteering and leading at embrella, she is the Director of Fiscal and Administrative Services for United Neighborhood Houses of NYC, a policy and social change organization representing 46 neighborhood settlement houses that reaches 765,000 New Yorkers. She enjoys spending time with her adopted daughter, Christina, who graduated in May 2023 with a degree in Global Health from Georgetown University.
Maria’s love and passion for people, including the children, youth, and families we serve, is evident throughout her life experiences and her years of service. Maria is excited to be in her new role of Board Chair and looks forward to continuing her service to embrella and advancing our mission, and we are just as excited to see where Maria’s leadership takes us!
embrella Will Be Hiring!
Coming soon.
Be sure to check out our Career Opportunities page in the coming month for our PACES Coach Region 2 position.
Upcoming Events
Exciting programs began in October and will culminate with our PEACE Summit scheduled for June 1, 2024!
Visit our PEACE Initiative page for more information.
embrella turns 50 next year!
Stay tuned as we announce events to celebrate throughout 2024!
