TuTTie's Place

o be reunited again. Can you imagine what it must feel like, as a child, to lose it all, your Mom, Dad, and sisters and brothers. As an advocate for children in the foster care system, Brenda Boyd saw the need for a service to reduce the possibility of sibling separation. Her compassion and love for children inspired her to launch TuTTie’s Place, a residential group home program for siblings in the foster care system. opened the doors of TuTTie’s Place to five youth in January of 1998. Since then, we have grown from one home with five youth, to five homes and 42 youth. Youth are referred to our program from the local and county Departments of Social Services. TuTTie’s Place provides services to adolescent males aged 14-21 years old. We are a long-term program, meaning youth may reside in our program until they exit the foster care system at age 21. We offer a host of enhancements to our program that are not funded by our State contract. Education is key to ending the cycle of abuse and neglect, and we encourage our youth to develop a love for learning and reward them monetarily for reading. Each youth is required to read an age-appropriate book and write an age-appropriate book report each month. The commitment to read and learn is the foundation on which he will develop the educational tools he needs to become a productive, contributing member of society. Our Building Blocks program of our enhancements includes: weekly art therapy of Art With A Heart, African Drumming, live talk radio every Wednesday from 4-5 pm on www.blogtalkradio.com. This blog radio broadcast is produced and directed by the children of TuTTie’s place and was designed to be a vehicle through which children in foster care could have a voice. We have three computer labs in our houses, and have professional computer instructors who teach computer literacy four times per week. We are big sports enthusiasts and compete in flag football, basketball, and softball through the IAA, a member group of alternative schools and group homes. We sponsor an Annual Holiday Basketball Tournament. We take advantage of membership to all the local parks, pools, recreation centers, libraries, community festivals, YMCA, Six Flags, etc. Our African Drummers have opened twice for the African American Heritage Festival, and their largest gig was, the opening act for Zane, a children’s musician performing live at the famous Meyerhof Symphony Hall. In addition to providing a safe and nurturing home, our mission is to provide quality services that promote education, self-awareness, self-sufficiency, and independence through healthy relationships with caring adults, to ensure that each youth graduates our program drug- and alcohol-free, and with a vested interest in higher education. Our goal is to build responsibility, accountability, and respect for themselves and of others, in order to maintain a cohesive role as a productive, law-abiding member of adult society. Our reliance on dwindling government funding and reduced philanthropic grants, impel us to examine new and inclusive ways to connect ourselves with other sources of earned income. We have assessed our internal resources and conclude that we have the organizational capacity to support a social venture. The purpose of this venture is to:
Generate revenue to support TuTTie’s Place, the parent company;
Provide our youth with marketable job skills that they can utilize upon completion of our program; and,
Provide workforce development and job opportunities for the unemployed, underemployed, and Welfare to Work clients. Greening Our Lives is our proposed property preservation venture. It will be a 12-week workforce development program that covers all facets of work in property preservation that includes: lawn care, trash removal, hauling, leaf/snow removal, boarding and securing vacant and foreclosed properties. The trainees will receive “hands-on” training instructed by an experienced landscaping professional who will teach specific skills on proper use of equipment, various types of grass, weeds, and plants. Our Workforce Development instructor will teach the importance of job-readiness skills such as punctuality, resume’ writing, computer literacy, interviewing techniques, positive work attitude, and teamwork. Upon completion of the program, TuTTie’s Place’s residents will continue to work for Greening Our Lives until the graduate from TuTTie’s Place or exit the foster care system. Our job-development coordinator will provide job opportunity leads and assist graduates in an intensive job search to obtain full-time employment opportunities for private landscaping companies as well as governmental public works opportunities. Greening Our Lives value preservation services will provide youth in the foster care and juvenile service systems the opportunity to learn marketable employment skills that will allow them to find and maintain legitimate employment that will support their independence. Our Welfare to Work clients will have the same opportunity and the long-term impact will be building stronger families and communities. We hope that this employment opportunity will reduce the number of children entering the foster care system due to their parents’ inability to financially care for their children, as well as reduce the cycle of abuse and neglect of children. Greening Our Lives will sustain the lives of our participants while enhancing the environment.