January 14, 2010 — The Massachusetts Adoption Resource Exchange, based in Boston, announced that it has received a two-year, $50,000 grant from the Cornerstone Charitable Foundation & Perpetual Trust for Charitable Giving to support its work in recruiting adoptive families for children in the state foster care system.

Lisa Funaro, executive director of the Massachusetts Adoption Resource Exchange (MARE), said, “Each year more than 600 local teens 'age out’ of the foster care system to fend for themselves in our communities,” said. “With the generous support of the Cornerstone Charitable Foundation & Perpetual Trust for Charitable Giving, MARE can continue to focus on finding adoptive families for children in state care who have been waiting the longest for a home.”

Describing the grant as “a welcome vote of confidence,” she said, “We are especially grateful that the grant supports our general operating expenses; these daily administrative expenses are the backbone of the MARE programs that make a lifetime of difference for children who need loving families.”

MARE’s work is focused around its community outreach programs which are designed to educate and recruit adults to consider adopting local children from state foster care. MARE’s programs include a wide variety of child-specific recruitment campaigns, such as “Wednesday’s Child” with Jack Williams on WBZ-TV 4 and “Sunday’s Child” in The Boston Globe, both of which feature a new waiting child every week. MARE also hosts adoption parties that give children and their social workers a chance to interact with prospective parents in a low-key atmosphere.

“When teens age out of state care, after years of the instability of foster care and early experiences of abuse or neglect, they are at higher risk for homelessness, violence, drugs, and early pregnancy,” Funaro said. “These risks are the very problems that put these children into foster care in the first. Adoption into stable, loving families can break these negative cycles, and lead to healthier, happier lives for the youngsters and their communities.”

According to MARE, today there are more than 129,000 children in the U.S. foster care system waiting to be adopted. MARE is currently seeking adoptive families for 532 children and teens in Massachusetts care. Since its founding in 1957, MARE has helped more than 5,350 children leave temporary state care for permanent family life.