Agape talks 300 for Hope House
EL DORADO — Executive Director and Administrator of the Agape House Children’s Home, Shaneil “PJ” Yarbrough, discussed the Agape House’s current project, the 300 for Hope House campaign, at the El Dorado Rotary Club meeting on Monday.
The Agape House is a non-profit group foster home located in El Dorado, serving foster children in and around Union County that are unable to live in their homes due to abuse, neglect or other life events, according to the Agape House’s brochure. Currently, they are working on a campaign called the 300 for Hope House, which will be the second home on the Agape House campus. The Hope House will be a family style, Christian, transitional living home for foster children 18 to 21 years of age.
Once a child turns 18, the Agape House can no longer take care of them because they have “aged out of the program,” Yarbrough said. There is currently a child at the Agape House who is two years from turning 18. “With that in mind and others like him, because of them aging out of the system, our second home, which will be built next to the Alexander Home, will be for transitional living,” Yarbrough said.
Living in the Hope House means that a person will be able to start college and take full advantage of the El Dorado Promise. “We will be able to help them get vehicles, insurance, jobs, everything that most parents help their children do in that transitional time,” Yarbrough said. “Agape is preparing right now to be able to do that for them.”
The Agape foster home plans to have the Hope
House built by the end of this year or early part of 2018.
The 300 for Hope House is a Christian campaign which involves 300 churches, Sunday school classes, businesses, groups, clubs or individuals who will be asked to donate $500 to construct the house. As of Monday, Yarbrough has posted 28 out of the 300 they are planning to ask for help. “So we’re getting there and we’re slowly climbing,” she said. “Those donations are coming in
on a daily basis.”
Listed below are some outcomes that foster children face after leaving a home, according to the Congressional Coalition on Adoption Institute (CCAI) and Jim Casey Youth Initiative, and also included in the Agape House Children’s Home’s brochure:
• Only 30.7 percent of children who grow up in foster care graduate from high school.
• Three percent will earn a college degree.
• 33 percent who “age out” of foster care will be homeless after the age of 18.
• Only 50 percent will be employed by the age
of 24.
• 71 percent of young women will be pregnant by age 21.
• 50 percent of youth “aging out” are involved with substance abuse.
“We’re looking at all of these statistics and we’re looking at the need for our next home, which will be to take care of those children,” Yarbrough said.
The Agape House is currently at full capacity with seven children and are eager to get the Hope House built so they can add an additional eight children in that home, Yarbrough said. In Union County, there are usually around 115 foster children at any given time. “With our long term goal of having five homes on the Agape campus, we would be able to primarily serve about 50 percent of that population,” she said. “Our goal is to build these homes every year and a half.”
For more information on how to donate, you can visit the Agape House Children’s Home website at www.supportagape.org or call (870) 444-5000. You can reach Yarbrough by email at pyarbrough@supportagape.org.