Ex-foster kid's charity donates 300,000+ backpacks to children
Rob Scheer founded the nonprofit Comfort Cases to provide backpacks filled with essential items to children entering the foster care system. The organization was inspired by his own childhood experience of being moved between foster homes with his belongings in a trash bag.
Why it matters
The charity addresses a systemic issue regarding the dignity of children in foster care, having distributed over 300,000 bags across the US and UK.
A simple effort around a dining table, started in 2013 to protect the dignity of children entering foster care, has grown into an international charity that has provided essential items to hundreds of thousands of young people. Rob Scheer began packing backpacks at home after seeing his newly adopted foster children arrive carrying their belongings in black plastic rubbish bags. Scheer remembered his own childhood in the foster care system and decided to end the practice by starting Comfort Cases. According to official impact figures from Comfort Cases, the nonprofit has distributed more than 300,000 Comfort Cases and Comfort XL duffel bags to children in foster care across all 50 US states, Washington, D.C., Puerto Rico and the United Kingdom. Comfort Cases says its first Packing Party took place in December 2013.Childhood memories trigger community actionScheer grew up in the American foster care system during the 1970s.
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