AUSTIN, Texas — Every week on KVUE, we feature a child in the Texas foster care system in hopes of helping them get adopted and find their forever family.
The Heart Gallery of Central Texas takes beautiful photos of children in foster care, then gets those photos printed out on large, shiny canvases. The canvases can be seen on local cafés, libraries and even at Austin-Bergstrom International Airport, in the Barbara Jordan Terminal.
But as Sarah Murry with Partnerships for Children explains, the organization is in need of more businesses that will allow these photos to be displayed on their walls.
"I think a lot of people think if they can't adopt, then they can't do anything. That's what we're trying to help people understand is you have a wall, and that helps," Murry said. "So it's very little investment on your part, but it has a lasting impact."
The Heart Gallery covers all of Region 7, which stretches from Hillsboro down to Lockhart, so Partnerships for Children needs more locations to install galleries, to widen visibility, especially in rural areas.
Typically, an exhibit will stay up for about a month before moving to a different location. Nonprofit workers with the Heart Gallery and Partnerships for Children help to coordinate the galleries.
To learn more, contact Sarah Murry at sarah.murry@partnershipsforchildren.org.
KVUE launched the Forever Families segment with Partnerships for Children (PFC) in June 2020 to highlight children in the Heart Gallery of Central Texas who need secure and permanent families. Every day, there are nearly 1,000 children waiting to get adopted in Central Texas, according to PFC.
Editor's note: The children who are in the Heart Gallery program and featured in KVUE's Forever Families segments are children who have had every effort made on their behalf to connect them with family or others in their community to provide options for permanent, adoptive homes. Through no fault of their own, that hasn’t happened yet, and so in partnership with the Department of Family and Protective Services, we collaborate to bring awareness to KVUE viewers about these children in the hopes of finding them permanency before they age out.