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Bloom's volunteer team putting together clothing racks and unloading clothes from boxes for the Closet Express stop at Fulton County
Credit: Ambria Burton/GPB News
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'More than a donation center': Georgia nonprofit creates boutique shopping for foster families
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LISTEN: Bloom Our Youth president and CEO Becky Davenport talks about what the organization does to help foster and kinship families across Georgia.
On Tuesday, May 28, Bloom Our Youth, a nonprofit organization dedicated to improving the lives of Georgia children affected by foster care, held an event in the parking lot of the New Life Community Center in Fulton County, where they provided free goods like clothes, personal care items, and more to 20 families, including 40 children.
The event was a part of the many stops in the Bloom Closet Express experience that consists of a 21-foot food truck that the organization has transformed into a store on wheels.
"The Bloom Closet Express is meant to reach children in underserved areas of the state," said Becky Davenport, president and CEO of Bloom Our Youth.
The truck travels to several locations across Georgia about three times a month to give foster families and children in group homes a personal shopping experience inside and out of the truck.
"On the inside of the Express, it's very well organized and looks like a store," Davenport said. "When we pack the truck up, we have rolling carts and boxes of stuff that we pull out to create this open-air boutique experience where a little bit of the store is out in the parking lot, and then you get to go inside and pick up stuff that's mostly brand new."
Bloom gives away items that are mostly gently used from donations. But in recent years the organization has gotten corporate support, allowing Bloom to provide new items, such as pajamas, socks, and underwear.
At the Fulton stop, the volunteer team set out clothes and other items for kids of all ages, from infants to teenagers. Kids could select five tops and five bottoms from the clothing racks before entering the truck for other goodies like books, games, personal hygiene needs, and more.
With its outreach across Georgia, Bloom visits different areas of the state by appointment.
"We'll go anywhere," Davenport said. "We've been down to the coast. We've been to Brunswick and that area. We've been up to the mountains."
The appointment aids the Bloom volunteer team in collecting information on the size, favorite colors, interests, and style of the kids beforehand to offer items that kids particularly want to shop for.
"Say if we're going to a group home, we get a list of the sizes and ages of the kids going to shop," she said. "We stock the truck ahead of time accordingly because, of course, we would not want anyone to be disappointed."
What is Bloom Our Youth?
Bloom Our Youth has been in business since 1987, when it ran two residential group homes for kids in foster care. As the foster care system in Georgia slowed down on putting children in group homes over time, Bloom started its foster care program.
The organization's mission is to empower Georgia families and communities to transform the lives of children affected by foster care.
According to the Division of Family and Children Services's Child Welfare's data on foster care, about 10,670 children were in the custody of the foster care system at the end of 2023.
"We go out into the community and recruit families who will take in children that are medically fragile, foster children with significant therapeutic needs, pregnant or parenting foster teens, etc," Davenport said.
Bloom provides training and support to foster families under their Bloom University program. The program provides foster families the tools they need to parent "traumatized" children, according to Davenport.
"Across the board in the state of Georgia, since COVID, the kids that are coming into care, their emotional needs are so much more complex than they used to be, and so that is what Bloom University helps with," she said. "We've grown that program in order so that families have the skills they need to address kids that have experienced significant trauma."
The Bloom Closet
The program that Bloom is mainly known for is The Bloom Closet.
While the Bloom Closet Express is like a pop-up boutique, The Bloom Closet, located in Fayetteville, is a cost-free boutique that provides clothing, books, school supplies, toiletries, baby gear and more to foster families and children in Georgia.
"Whatever kids need, you will find it at The Bloom Closet," Davenport said.
According to the organization website, clients of The Bloom Closet include:
- Any Georgia foster child living in the custody of DFCS, including children living in DFCS-approved kinship homes.
- College-age foster children attending school who have signed themselves back into DFCS custody.
- Foster children in an Independent Living Program who have signed themselves back into DFCS custody.
To visit The Bloom Closet, foster families or guardians of foster children must schedule an appointment and present a DFCS placement letter or referral letter from their caseworker, proving that DFCS names the children they are shopping for under their care.
Foster children have access to free items from the Closet at a quarterly rate or after a growth spurt.
"I would say the No. 1 thing to know about the Bloom Closet is that it restores dignity to the children that are distressed and often at the worst time of their life when they are removed from their homes, and they enter the foster care system," Davenport said. "When kids walk through our doors, they know they are somebody, not just a number in the system."
Davenport shares that one of the barriers to people wanting to sign up to be foster parents is the financial aspect, so the Closet is a helpful resource to help foster parents provide basic needs for their kids.
"It's hard even to raise your children, much less to be a foster parent, so this provides a little bit of extra support for them and helps them be successful in their role as foster parents," she said.
Providing a stress-free shopping experience for foster parents
A Decatur foster parent (name withheld for name for protective reasons) of two — a 6-year old and an 8-year old — reached out to The Bloom Closet about two months ago.
"My 8-year-old child came to me with a ton of stuff because she came from another foster mom," the parent said, "But my son, I was his first placement, so he came with about half a suitcase full of stuff. So we made an appointment with Bloom and took him shopping.
"It was just a really good experience. I took both of them, and they loved it. Bloom does a really good job of making them not feel like they're shopping at some kind of, like, donation center. The [children] both thought that we were at Target, and they just loved shopping there. [Bloom] has a general store that my kids got to pick out toys and then they have an area that they get to play while I shop for clothes. And then all the employees were really, really sweet and loved on my babies and things like that."
The organization is expanding. On Tuesday, May 21, The Bloom Closet opened its first expansion location in Rome at the Restoration Rome facility.
The new location follows a camping theme in honor of North Georgia's strong nature ties.
"We've got this really beautiful woodsy wallpaper, a little tent at the play area in the front, and critters like otters and foxes around as decorations," said Devon Smyth, runs the Bloom Closet program in Rome.
Smyth, the Rome Bloom Closet program coordinator, spends much of her time in the store with families. In her message to the families and children visiting the location, she highlights Bloom's purpose of restoring dignity to children visiting The Bloom Closet.
"We're saying that you are special; somebody is paying attention to you." Smyth said. "They get that hour and a half where whether it's with their kinship, placement person, grandmother, aunt or uncle, or their foster parent, they are getting a full shopping appointment to choose and be loved."
What's next?
Alongside their current programs, Bloom is launching a new program called Bloom Direct, allowing the organization to mail items to kids just entering foster care.
Bloom Direct would use a Stitch Fix brand model to collect information from users, such as foster children filling out a questionnaire about their clothing preferences.
"We could pull items based on their size and preferences," said Bloom's marketing and development coordinator, Cristie Wilt. "They will then receive a specially curated Bloom Box delivered to their front door, filled with all of their favorite clothing and other essential items."
Bloom Direct makes it easier for kids who cannot reach Bloom at their Fayetteville or Rome locations to have items delivered to them.
"Kids could go on our website and order stuff just like they would on Amazon, so we're excited about that," Davenport said.
At least one client is interested in Bloom Direct.
"[Bloom is] able to provide a lot, but if there's something that we weren't able to get or something like that, yeah Bloom Direct would be awesome," the Decatur foster parent said.
Another program Bloom is launching is the Family Resource Center, which helps families needing preventative services such as its Triple P (Positive Parenting Program) parent support, and linkage to community resources.
"Children who are more at risk get to come in and be a part of the Bloom Express and just go shopping for clothes," Wilt said. "We try to help those families and children out, so it's not just children in foster care that we care for."
Other organizations in Georgia similar to Bloom Our Youth that are dedicated to helping aid the foster community throughout the state include:
- Flourish Foster Care Closet & Support Inc.
- Carrie's Closet
- Chosen For Life Ministries Foster Care Clothes Closet
- Sparrow's Closet
- Because One Matters
- Emonie's Closet
Bloom of Youth has an ambitious future goal for its next 10 years.
"In the last year we served, we gave away $1.3 million worth of free items to kids from 130 counties, and so our goal now is to reach every child in foster care," Davenport said.
She said programs like the Bloom Express, the Fayetteville and Rome Bloom Closet locations, and Bloom Direct are ways that Bloom Our Youth can reach that goal.
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