Hi, I’m Tina Marie Scully and I’m with Families Reaching Out Group. We also run Froggy’s Closet. Froggy’s Closet is set up like a store but everything is free. We have clothing, books, toys, strollers, high chairs, actually anything a child would need, set up very nicely like a store. And foster families come in and pick out what they need.

Other agencies that refer to us, and we have 19 of those, we fill bags for them with seven outfits and anything else that’s on the list. Froggy’s Closet was started in 2011. We received non-profit status and we set up the store mainly because I’ve had 37 foster children. And when children come into care, they generally come in with the clothing on their back. And it’s such a scramble to get all the clothing that they need. You may get a baby or an eight year old and you don’t always have that in your household.

So throughout the next couple years we realized that there was such a need in our community for other children beyond foster children. So we help any child in need. Our community is amazing, we have the most generous community. Everything we get in our store is set up through donations. We have people that contact us monthly and they will go out and buy sizes of what we need. We have people that go through their closet and bring in very gently used clothing, books, toys. They will call us, there’s always a list on the Internet. I can’t even tell you how, what a great job our community does in helping us help children.

So many other families that we serve for Froggy’s Closet, they’re just down on their luck. They’re really trying to do the best they can do but they may have lost their job, they, even though they are working they’re just barely getting by. So we connect a gap. We help them with clothing or books or toys, whatever we can do we wanna help any child in need.

The one thing that I would really like to have this year for Froggy’s Closet is more volunteers. We do, the community as I said, is so generous but the thing that we need are people that can come into the shop, even a couple hours a week, and help sort through the clothing, fold clothing, put clothing on the shelf, just organizational skills, any of that would be wonderful.

The most rewarding thing for me is that I know every time a child comes in, they may be sad, they leave with a smile on their face. You can just see it, they’re glowing. Some times the parents are very happy too. It is, we’re truly making a positive difference in the life of a young child.

Okay, beyond Froggy’s Closet, Families Reaching Out Group provides support to foster families. The first Monday of each month we have a support group which we will have a meal, a speaker, and the children come together and play and do arts and craft. Another thing that FROG is able to do is to pay for an extracurricular activity for a foster child, one each month, this year. Because of the chain of checks, we’re also going to pay for registration fees and sports equipment when it’s needed for students that are in school. We feel that that’s a very important thing, if we can get them on track when they’re young to stay in sports, to do things like that that there’s less of a chance that they’ll veer off the wrong track. And that is possible because of the chain of checks this year that we received.

The biggest fundraiser that we do each year is called our Abnormal Formal. This year it’ll be on September seventh. We try to raise 25 to 30 thousand dollars each year because that is how we keep our doors open ’cause we do have to pay rent. It’s always a theme. This year the theme is going to be Totally 80s in Film. It is a great event, we have silent auction items, live auction items and people really get into dressing up, you don’t have to but since it’s the Abnormal Formal, it’s a little, they put a little flare with whatever they’re wearing and you really don’t ever know what you’re gonna see.

If someone in our community would like to start a non-profit to help somebody in need, what you would need to do is apply for a 501C3. If you have that desire and drive, make sure you have other people behind you that are willing to commit to reaching that goal. For more information, if you have a Facebook page, then we have Families Reaching Out Group Froggy’s Closet as a page where we keep everything updated daily on our needs. We also have a website, Frog-Kids.org or come by the shop at 32 East Piccadilly Street. We’d love to give you a tour.