Answering the CALL
El Dorado Service League presents donation to The CALL
Members of the El Dorado Service League presented a check yesterday morning to The CALL of Union County’s executive director Karen Hicks to go toward furnishing a support center for foster children in the county.
The CALL, a nonprofit operating in 50 Arkansas counties, helps to match children in need of foster homes with Christian families and provides supplies, support and education for local families. El Dorado Service League, another nonprofit, works to provide assistance for other agencies working toward child welfare in Union County, like The CALL.
“Our mission is to serve the underprivileged children of El Dorado, and that can come in many forms,” said Alex Bennett, ESL President. “It can be medical: we help provide eyeglasses, dental exams if they can’t afford it, gas cards to go to doctors. It could be clothing: we provide clothing after house fires or just if the family needs it … That’s our mission, just to serve the kids in any way that we can.”
Yesterday morning, Hicks and several members of ESL gathered at 1024 Euclid, where Hicks was presented with a check for $5,000. Hicks said that ESL member Lauren Harrison will decorate the house, the support center, with the funds.
Harrison has been involved with The CALL as well, fostering and eventually adopting a child through the organization, Hicks said.
“We’re trying to let that be their project and they’re really excited about it,” Hicks said. “We actually got to buy new stuff … otherwise we’d have been going to people asking if they had a couch. We’re excited about this.”
The house will act as an alternative location for children to meet with their biological families; otherwise, they would meet at a Department of Human Services office, which Hicks said can be
discomforting for children.
It will also act as an education center for the community, specifically families that foster children through The CALL or that have been separated from their children and are working to reunite with them.
“It’ll be a place of education for them and working to get their kids back,” Bennett said. “So you can go over and cook dinner and teach a foster family or parent how to cook spaghetti one night; you can go help a child with homework – just to bring back normalcy to a foster family and their biological parents, because that’s the whole goal of fostering, to get them back with their biological parents.”
Bennett said the donation was important to ESL members, because the children that will use the home need a stable place that is comfortable and warm.
“So they are fully moved in. Our donation was mainly used to furnish the home, so to make it a home,” Bennett said. “Tables and desks for kids to do their homework on, couches to relax on – make it warm there.”
ESL fundraises throughout the year, with both large and small projects. In April, they’ll host their 23rd annual four-man scramble golf tournament at the El Dorado Golf and Country Club, and later in the year they will host their annual social event. Bennett said The CALL is an organization they work with often to promote child welfare in the area.
“I love that the Service League’s mission is Union County children,” Hicks said. “They’ve helped us out in the past … and they’re really good about helping out.”
Bennett said the donation was raised through a labor of love.
“What it meant to us is a lot of hard work that goes into fundraising so that we can support organizations like The CALL,” she said.
The CALL hosts a monthly information meeting for those who might be interested in fostering a child or helping the organization; each meeting is held at a different church in the county.
Hicks said the best way to keep track of the meetings, or news about The CALL, is through their website, thecallinarkansas.org/union, or their Facebook page.