The Atlantic Institute is proud to report that Sweet Dreams and Prayers For You was an incredible success! For this event, we joined forces with some of the Upstate's finest faith and interfaith communities to gather items that would make a positive impact on the lives of children entering the foster system. We are happy to say that 105 pillow cases stuffed with toys, hygiene items, clothes, blankets, and other essentials were decorated with love and care by our amazing volunteers! We were absolutely overwhelmed by the amount of goods raised by our partnering communities and cannot express our gratitude enough to those that helped make this vital program a success.

While none of this would have been possible without the hard work and dedication of Rund Abdelnabi and AI's own Christina Bell, we also recognize all the incredible work done by Holy Cross Episcopal, Upstate International, The Riley Institute, the Sikh Society of South Carolina, Congregation Beth Israel, Fostering Great Ideas, Temple of Israel, and Emmanuel Church of Christ. We are truly blessed to have truly empathetic people willing to help children in need.

We would like to give a special thanks to David White from Fostering Great Ideas for leading us all through the "Limbo" exercise which gave us all a glimpse of what it is like entering the foster system. This exercise gave us a good idea of why the items we collected and the sense of owning something that is truly your own is so important to kids facing the daunting foster care system.

We are excited to continue to make positive impacts to the foster system. Keep an eye on our website and Facebook for more opportunities!