How to Offer Hope and Support to Foster Care College Students

Notice: The Red Scarf Project is now closed. I will leave this post and notice up for a while to capture anyone who might find a link to this post, but in a month or so, I will be taking it down. Thank you to the readers who informed me of the Red Scarf Project’s decision to close.

Imagine what it must be like to be removed from the only home you ever knew–perhaps as a young child, even as a baby–because that home is too dangerous to grow up in.

This is the plight of far too many children in the United States who must enter the foster care system. For a variety of reasons–drug abuse, domestic violence, incarceration, mental illness, parental death–a child’s home may be deemed unsafe. When this happens, the child is placed in foster care.

Foster care isn’t meant to be a permanent solution. It is meant to offer parents the opportunity to overcome their issues and know that their children are safe in the meantime. Unfortunately, many parents are never able to overcome those issues, and as a result, their children may never return home.

In the meantime, many foster children live very unstable lives. Foster parents are often unprepared or unable to care for children long-term, which may mean a childhood full of moves to different homes and different school districts.

In addition, the age of 18 looms ahead of foster children. This is when children are said to have “aged out.” This means that the child is legally an adult, and the government is no longer compelled to ensure that the child has anything–including shelter, money, clothing, and food.

But while the child may technically no longer be a child, they are often still very much children who aren’t ready to live on their own.

Foster Care to Success and the Red Scarf Project

Fortunately, many wonderful organizations work hard to meet the needs of such children. One such organization is Foster Care to Success.

Recognizing the enormous gap left between foster care and higher education, FC2S has worked tirelessly with these children to ensure that they aren’t left on their own when they want to attend college.

The Red Scarf Project is but one project of FC2S. Its aim is to place a handmade scarf into the hands of every foster child aging out of foster care and preparing to enter the world of college and adulthood.

When one of these college students receives a Red Scarf, it usually becomes a treasured keepsake that the student will wear for years to come. The Red Scarf is a tangible evidence for such students that someone cares, enough to spend their precious time on a scarf just for them!

How You Can Help

You can help, of course, by knitting or crocheting a scarf!

The Red Scarf Project page details guidelines and shipping information.

Note that scarves are collected from September 1 to December 15 each year. You can make scarves at any time, but they ask that all donors send scarves only between these dates, as they have limited storage space.

I would also highly encourage you to take a look at Ravelry’s Red Scarf Project group. This group is full of active knitters and crocheters who dedicate themselves to this effort. You’ll get lots of encouragement and inspiration here!

With Foster Care to Success, the Red Scarf Project, and the Student Emergency Fund, you can offer hope, encouragement, and a real opportunity to former foster children entering the world of adulthood!