Welcome back to Season 6 of Fostering Change!

We hope you enjoyed our first episode of the season with Andrew Bridge. This is a reminder that if you order his book before its publication date, a portion of the sale will go to CASA chapters nationwide. Please visit AndrewBridgeAuthor.com and select the CASA chapter of your choice.

In today’s episode, we have two exceptional guests - one is making her second appearance on our show. Donna Biase co-founded BEST FOOT FORWARD Foundation, a Florida-based organization whose mission is to empower foster care and at-risk youth to become self-sufficient adults and positive contributing members of society through academic achievement.

Having survived the deadly and horrific earthquake that ravaged his home country of Haiti, Elie Merisier was in the foster care system in High School when Best Foot Forward reached out to him to provide assistance with his academic studies. We’ll let you listen to the show for more details, but you should know that despite attending five different high schools, Elie graduated from Florida Atlantic University with a degree in accounting. Today, he is a licensed real estate agent.

We hope you enjoy today’s episode of Fostering Change as much as we think you will. Of course, if you have any questions or comments about our interview with Elie and Donna or have a guest suggestion, please email us at info@comfortcases.org.

More about Donna and Elie:

To learn more about Elie, please follow him on social media:

Facebook

https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100092082848694

Instagram

https://www.instagram.com/elie_merisier/

LinkedIn

https://www.linkedin.com/feed/eliemerisier/

To learn more about Best Foot Forward:

Facebook

facebook.com/bestfootkids

Instagram

instagram.com/bestfootkids

Twitter/X

twitter.com/bestfootkids

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Welcome to Season 6 of Fostering Change!

Following 220 amazing episodes, we are so excited for what’s to come this season. We have special and moving guests, and throughout the season we are inviting some of Comfort Cases’ friends to co-host episodes with Rob Scheer. That includes today’s episode, as we are so lucky to have Rita Soronen, CEO of the Dave Thomas Center for Adoption join Rob to interview our first guest of the season, Andrew Bridge, author of The Child Catcher: A Fight for Justice & Truth.

If you have a suggestion for a guest, or questions or comments about today’s episode, please reach out to us at info@comfortcases.org.

About today’s first episode of our new season: Rob and Rita have a riveting conversation with Andrew Bridge - about his time in foster care, and the battles he has fought for youth in foster care. His new book, The Child Catcher, is the true story of the fight to rescue the children confined to a violent and secretive institution in the rural South.

Proceeds from the book will go to CASA National, State, and local county chapters. Buyers should go to AndrewBridgeAuthor.com and select the CASA chapter of their choice, and 50% of pre-sale royalties will go there.

More About Andrew: Andrew spent 11 years in Los Angeles County foster care. After aging out, unlike so many in foster care he made it to college: Wesleyan University, and then graduated from Harvard Law School and was awarded a Fulbright Fellowship.

He began his legal career representing children against the State of Alabama, where his work resulted in the closure of one of the country’s most notorious psychiatric institutions, the Eufaula Adolescent Center.

Returning to Los Angeles, he became CEO of The Alliance for Children’s Rights, representing children in the foster care system where he grew up.

Andrew is the co-founder of National Adoption Day and New Village Girls Academy for pregnant and parenting teens. As Chair of Los Angeles County’s Blue Ribbon Task Force, he called for an end to the disproportionate removal of Black babies from their mothers.

His memoir Hope’s Boy was a New York Times bestseller and Washington Post Best Book of the Year. Most recently, he was a member of the executive management team for Illinois DCFS, and with Arizona as his home, he now serves on the Arizona Foster Care Review Board.

His second book about that fight against Alabama, The Child Catcher, will be released in September.

To find out more about Andrew, please follow him on social media:

Facebook

https://www.facebook.com/andrew.bridge.9041/

Instagram

andrewbridgejd

Twitter/X

@AndrewBridgeJD

Threads

AndrewBridgejd

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You’ve made it! It’s the end of August and our final “Best of Season 5” episode of the season, and we’ve saved a very special episode just for you.

Just a note that Season 6 will debut next week, Tuesday, September 3. We have some amazing guests lined up, and are doing something new this season: on several episodes, we are bringing in special guests to Co-Host interviews with Rob Scheer. You’ll recognize some of the names as previous guests, and there will also be some new names for you - who we know you will love as much as we do.

Now, for our final “Best of” we needed to do something special. When we booked Emily Cole on Fostering Change last December for our 200th episode, we knew that we would hear all about the amazing Savannah Bananas baseball team (maybe you’ve been lucky enough to see them in person this season, or at least on ESPN?) as well as their philanthropic effort Bananas Foster, dedicated to Bringing Families Together by focusing on celebrating those who are doing amazing things in the foster care world while educating and inspiring others to get involved.

Because of all that Emily, her husband Jesse, and the team do for our foster youth, Comfort Cases will award them our special Barbara Harrison Award at our Farm-to-Feast Annual Fundraising event on September 28. This award is given annually to someone who truly is changing the lives of those in the foster care system.

If you would like to celebrate Emily, Jess and many other “Good Humans”, we would love for you to join us on September 28. Tickets are available at https://comfortcases.org/feast/. If you have an item you would like to donate for our live auction, you can also find information on the site. Our annual fundraiser is held on a beautiful farm in the Maryland countryside. There will be entertainment by our friends, the Como Brothers, fabulous food and wine, and other surprises.

Emily shares her story with Rob on today’s podcast. We hope you will find it inspiring and motivated to become involved in your community, be it foster care or some other form of charitable act.

To learn more about Bananas Foster, please visit: https://bananasfoster.org/ and visit https://thesavannahbananas.com/ to learn more about the Savannah Bananas Baseball team!

You can follow Emily and the Bananas on Social Media:

Instagram: @EmCole3 @thesavbananas @bananasfosterinc

TikTok: @SavBananas

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TheSavBananas

To listen to previous episodes of Fostering Change, please visit: www.comfortcases.org/podcast or your favorite podcast outlets.

If you have any comments, questions, or guest suggestions, we’d love to hear from you! Please write us at info@comfortcases.org.Thank you for listening and we’ll see you next Tuesday for the start of Season 6 of Fostering Change!!!

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