Page 4 - Stuart Exposure - September '20

Page 4, Stuart Exposure

In Your CommunItY

Albert Wilson Foundation Summer Swelter
Makes Back-To-School Can’t Stop Service

Donation To Foster Youth High temperatures, brutal humidity and the

Heading To College ongoing COVID-19 pandemic are no match for
the passion and commitment of local volunteers.
Like so many These volunteers are spending their summer
students in the collecting school supplies, filling back packs
graduating class of and getting duffel bags, care packages, masks
2020, Tonia and Roda and other valuable resources to children and
missed a lot of their families served by Communities Connected
senior year due to the for Kids. They include United Way of St.
COVID-19 pandemic Lucie County volunteers who spent days in
and subsequent a warehouse assembling school supplies for
school closures. But children in foster care, and local business owner
Miami Dolphins
wide receiver Albert In Your Community on page 5
Wilson wanted to
give them something
back from their last
semester of high
school. Through his
St. Lucie County-based Albert Wilson Foundation, he
purchased travel trunks for the young women and filled them
with all the essentials – and a few fun things – they might
need for the next chapter in their lives.

Each trunk contained about $1,000 worth of items,
including linens and towels, storage units and decorative
items, printers and gift cards to local restaurants.
On Friday, foundation representatives met them at
Communities Connected for Kids, the organization that
oversees foster care and the local child-welfare system,
and helped them load their cars with the trunks – a sort of
preview of move-in day when the two head to college. A
third graduate who could not attend the event also received
a trunk. “I always think back to when I was growing up and
the things I wish I had, or certain situations that made me
uncomfortable,” said Wilson, who attended Port St. Lucie
High School while also living in foster care. “When I went
off to school I didn’t know what to take with me and didn’t
have the means to do so.”
The Albert Wilson Foundation, he said, looks for
opportunities and ways it can help set youth in foster care
up for success. “That’s why the foundation was more than
happy to donate trunks filled with school supplies to three
seniors graduating high school who came up through the
foster-care system, Wilson said. “We hope those supplies
will be a positive start and provide the basic needs for those
students as they start college.”
Roda is heading to Tallahassee this month to attend
Florida State University and Tonia will begin her college
adventure closer to home, at Indian River State College.
Their names were altered for privacy.
Wilson, who graduated Port St. Lucie High School in
2010, has been giving back to the local community since
early in his NFL career when he played for the Kansas City
Chiefs. He hosts an annual football clinic for children in the
community and regularly meets the needs of local foster
families through his foundation.
He spent the majority of his childhood years in and
out of group care and foster homes before finally finding
stability in the 10th grade. Prior to his sophomore year of
high school, he spent time at the Hibiscus Children’s Center,
in Vero Beach, and at Boys Town in Oviedo. He later found
a home with Brian and Rose Bailey in Port St. Lucie before
eventually moving back to family and heading to play ball
for the Georgia State Panthers.

See answer in this paper.