Catherine Bell founded Chosen Forever to get adoptable children out of foster care before age 18. Thirty percent of homeless adults and 60% of trafficked kids came from foster care. Bell was adopted at 16 and later adopted twins; her organization has facilitated 69 adoptions.
My nonprofit, Chosen Forever, focuses on getting the 120,000 adoptable children in the US foster care system adopted before their 18th birthday, which is their final black trash bag day, which statistically these kids end up homeless. 30% of our homeless population came outta foster care, which leads to drugs, prostitution, and being trafficked. And 60% of the kids being trafficked came outta foster care. So literally the solution is adoption. By giving them a family, a forever family, it changes their neuron pathways and allows them to form healthy bonds with other adults., and that allows them to stop the— break the cycle that they were born into. They can go on and be productive, contributing members to society. And so why this matters is I was a Black trash bag kid and I was adopted when I was 16 and it saved my life. And I also adopted my twins out of the foster care system when they were babies, and now they're 21, grown up, doing all the things. We've already gotten 69 children adopted and got, again, 120,000 to go. So one kid at a time, we can get this done.
