Charity Spotlight — Hope Children’s Home

We are expe­cially excited about next weeks First Friday cel­e­bra­tion! It’s going to be FABULOUS! More on that in Monday’s blog, how­ever, today we wanted to tell you about our charity focus, Hope Children’s Home. This charity was brought to us by our celeb bar­tender, Nick Peterson.

Founded in 1968, Hope Children’s Home has res­cued nearly 5,000 chil­dren between the ages of infant to 18 years of age. Most of these chil­dren have been dis­carded, abused, unwanted, or orphaned although some of the chil­dren have simply come out of a sit­u­a­tion where a parent just needed help. For over 40 years, Hope Children’s Home has taken chil­dren in and tried to make a dif­fer­ence in their very impres­sion­able lives. The pur­pose at Hope Children’s home is to help the chil­dren grow, heal and to develop into edu­cated and spir­i­tu­ally grounded mem­bers of society.

Hope Children’s Home is located in north­west Tampa,  on 55 beau­ti­fully wooded acres of land. The campus con­sists of dor­mi­to­ries for the boys and girls that can house a total of 80 chil­dren as well as beau­tiful 4,000 sq. ft. cot­tages that care for the younger chil­dren and allow sib­lings to live together. The chil­dren live in a family atmos­phere with house par­ents who are with them twenty-​​four hours a day, seven days a week to give guid­ance and encouragement.

Hope Chris­tian School is also located on the prop­erty and is accred­ited by the state of Florida, pro­viding a pri­vate, quality, Chris­tian edu­ca­tion to each of the chil­dren including a well rounded sports pro­gram.  The school pro­gram incor­po­rates pre-​​school through the 12th grade. Over 90% of the stu­dents who grad­uate from Hope Chris­tian School con­tinue on to college.

Hope Children’s Home receives no State or Fed­eral funding and is entirely sup­ported by churches, pri­vate indi­vid­uals, clubs, and orga­ni­za­tions. The direc­tors, board mem­bers and staff at Hope Children’s Home believe that they are spir­i­tu­ally called upon to help rebuild the broken lives of these chil­dren and to build the bridge, when pos­sible, between home, parent, and child. The rewards of their labor are the thou­sands of young people across the country who are now pro­duc­tive adults raising their own chil­dren in the same loving and Christ-​​like way in which they were raised.

How can you help Hope Children’s Home? Glad you asked! You can make gen­eral dona­tions on their home­page, through their giving cat­alog if you want to give a more spe­cific gift, they have an imme­diate needs list and lastly, there are sev­eral Hope Thrift Store loca­tions in Tampa and Clear­water.  If you are in the Tampa area, simply attend our First Friday coming up on June 6th, where you can meet their rep­re­sen­ta­tives and make a dona­tion that night.   Every little bit helps, so why not give and make a difference!