A Letter From Brandon's Forever Home

I’m sure when we all look back on the past year and a half we can all agree that our lives were thrown into a tailspin and no one expected it. So many aspects of our day to day lives went from routine to upside down. While the world struggled to adjust to the new norm of life during a pandemic, Brandon’s Forever Home, our staff and programming also redirected to meet the demands that COVID-19 set upon us. We saw a community of people suffer sickness, job loss, family loss, and hidden child abuse and with every new need we quickly planned to face it head on and continue to provide our services to now a much broader client base. For those unfamiliar with our mission, Brandon’s Forever Home was created in the heart of downtown Hazleton to serve the surrounding community’s abused and neglected children. What once was the drop off of a few donations in a founder’s garage has grown into its own site, a hub, for activities, services and material assistance. Brandon's Forever Home offers free clothing, school supplies, hygiene products and more to children in foster care. We also provide tutoring, scholarships, and free monthly activities for families and those in our mentoring program. We offer a support

group as well lead by a licensed therapist. Additionally, our food distribution which operates weekly is income based and open to the general public. With all of this said, we could not have accomplished any of these tasks without the outpouring of help from volunteers, the tremendous amount of donations we received, and the unity of other local non-profi t agencies. Each time the storm became stronger we would rise up to meet it. Thank you to CEO, who we have partnered with to feed our local families each week without pause, the local organizations such as Leadership WilkesBarre, Junior Leadership Wilkes-Barre, Saint Jude’s Church Mountain Top, our devoted staff and volunteers, our teen mentors, and all of the individuals who reached out to us privately with monetary donations, material assistance, clothing, diapers and more. We have been behind closed doors for much of this time due to health and safety restrictions but please know that every effort you have made to support this mission has made all the difference. We truly could not have continued to provide what we had without this support. Please continue to spread the word of our mission, pray alongside us for the health and safety of the world’s

community and make your own Calcutta. “Find your own Calcutta. Find the sick and suffering a n d the lonely right there where you are in your own homes, in your own families, in your workplaces and in your schools. You can find Calcutta all over the world if you have the eyes to see. Everywhere, where ever you go, you find people who are unwanted, unloved, uncared for just rejected by society, completely forgotten, completely left alone.” -Mother Theresa