A Foster Mom’s Love.

Mama Josse pushes one of her foster kids on the baby swings.

I will never forget the moment I realized how fiercely our foster moms love their kiddos.

It was a couple months after we opened the village, everything seemed to be going well, and our next step was increasing the number of kids in each home from 5 to 8. That's a lot of little humans to care for. The plan was also to establish systems to make things as easy as possible for our foster moms.

While I was there, we hired two part-time helpers to make things easier for the foster moms. These helpers would be in charge of bringing the kids down to play on the playground or with the community center's toys daily.

This wasn't a secret. All of the foster moms knew what we were doing. However, on the helper's first day, we brought all the kiddos down to the community center to play. We told the foster moms that they didn't need to stay because the helpers would watch them and bring the kids up for dinner.

Not a single foster mom left. They stayed. About 10 minutes in, I asked our DRC Director, Ety, why they weren't going to relax and have some time to themselves. He told me that they all wanted to make sure the kids were okay. They stayed to make sure their kiddos were safe and comfortable and having fun. They met the helpers, and now that they trust them, they love having some time to do things without their kids.

I'm forever grateful for these women. Bolingo would be nothing without them.