I have been thinking about starting an organization like Little Hands to Hold, Inc since traveling to Guatemala to adopt our daughter. At the time, we were working with an adoption liaison and presented her with a doll for her own 8-year-old daughter. The doll was in the child’s likeness. She was just amazed and cried tears of joy. This was the first doll she ever owned. This encounter made me think of my older daughter, and her 5 or 6 dolls that she took so much joy in playing with and I realized there was a real need to start an organization that gave disadvantaged little girls a special doll. After returning home to the states and thinking more, I decided that I would create Little Hands to Hold, Inc focusing first on New Hampshire’s foster care system and expanding the organization from there.

This year, Little Hands to Hold, Inc has changed its mission statement to include supporting the needs of both boys and girls, up to the age of 12, with a full backpack of supplies that will be given to support their emotional, educational and development needs. The average child in foster care moves to various providers three to four times during their care. The backpack includes items they will be able to take with them and keep forever: toiletries, an age-appropriate book, coloring book and crayons (or journal and pen for older children), a naptime fleece blanket, a doll or teddy bear. It is designed to emulate the type of bag a children would bring for an overnight to grandmas. Quite often when children are removed from their domestic situation, their items are taken in a garbage bag, and necessities are hard to come by. This solution provided by Little Hands to Hold, Inc supplies children with their own luggage, as well as comfort and necessity items to help them with their transitions.