From its inception, Fostering Great Ideas has focused on creating and sustaining the bonds that allow children in foster care to thrive. Founder David White started the organization with support from the Community Foundation, incubating ideas that would become programs to promote emotional well-being through relationships, the building blocks of resilience.
Latece Logan, the nonprofit’s first employee after White, has seen a number of those relationships flourish, both while she managed the Sib-Link program, which arranges for siblings placed in different foster homes to spend time together, and now as director of the Life Support mentor program.
“Mentors play a very strong role in a child’s life, providing a sense of stability and consistency,” Logan says. “Children in foster care may move often, but mentors stay with them, sometimes even after adoption, so they feel important, cared for, and like their voice matters.”
Celeste Prashad-Wright found that consistency with Chad and Pam Prashad, who tutored and mentored her while she was a teenager in foster care, living at Pendleton Place. The Prashads stayed with her through ups and downs—when she enrolled in Greenville Tech at 18, and when she dropped out because she was working two jobs and couldn’t stay awake in class. She moved out of the dorm, saved her money, had a child, then went back to GTC and was successful, thanks to a stronger support system.
Through it all, her bond with the Prashads grew, and at age 22, she joined their family through adoption. With their encouragement, she is working toward a bachelor’s degree in Business Management at Clemson, and expects to graduate in May 2021.
“My parents said, ‘You need a new challenge; you could go to a university.’ I felt like it was kind of a long shot, but they were right,” she said. “The first semester was a big transition, but my parents said,’you’re smart, you can adapt.’ Sometimes it takes people around you seeing things you don’t see about yourself. “