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Hope Children’s Home in Tampa, Florida, helps infants, children, and young people requiring shelter from abuse, neglect, and other family struggles by providing a safe shelter, nurturing activities, and a positive Christian atmosphere. For more than 50 years, the state-accredited foster care home has worked with some 5,000 youth and their families, always with the goal of keeping siblings together and reuniting families whenever possible. On its website, Hope Children’s Home shares numerous personal video testimonials from those who have benefited from its short and long-term care, all deeply moving and offering rare inspiration about what is possible to accomplish with God’s love and guidance.
These videos show a sunlit, tree-shaded 55-acre expanse of rural land nestled just outside Tampa, with children enjoying playing on the playground, reading, learning, sharing chores, and engaging in other activities with attentive adult supervision.
One young man, now an adult, tells the story of how he came to the foster care home. His mother had gone to prison, and his father struggled with alcoholism. As the eldest of four brothers at home, he bore adult responsibilities. At the foster home, however, things changed. During the eight years he spent there, for the first time, he and his brothers got the individualized attention and structure they needed.
A young woman who spent 11 years at the foster home recalled that before she joined the Hope Children’s Home family, her mother, a single parent of five children, had to house the family in an apartment with no electricity or running water for two months. Another young woman was abandoned by her father at a Wendy’s restaurant and turned over to the foster home, where she would spend 12 years. When he abandoned them, her father said he never wanted to see her or her brother again.
At Hope Children’s Home, “Rescuing the next generation” is the motto, teaching young people character and self-reliance is the goal, and love is the solution.
