>> My name is Maria Petrakos and I
am the Prevent and Volunteer Manager
with the Foundation for Foster Children
and that is a private nonprofit
organization specific to Orlando.
We privately fund raise so we don't rely on any
kind of government funding or government grants
and the money we raise goes
back to the foster kids residing
in Orange, Osceola and Seminole County.
We have a pretty large population of foster
children in the area and we provide funding
for tutoring, dance classes, sports, field
trips, graduation photos, things like that.
My, the main part of my role is
reviewing requests for funding.
I, I've only been in my position
officially like seven months now
so I can't even give you an average of
how many requests we receive a month,
but I get requests every week for
tutoring, for birthday cakes and gifts
and my main role is reviewing those requests.
We almost always approve them and finding
the relationships to set up tutoring,
to set up the dance classes and making
sure that the kids actually start
because sometimes we'll get
requests and then we don't know
when the kids start the activity
that we're offering to fund, so.
We do have a large fund raising event.
It's our annual Shake a Tour
[assumed spelling] fashion show.
We always have a keynote
speaker who has some kind
of relationship with the foster care system.
Recently it's been adults who grew up in
foster care, which is great and it's a pull
at the heartstrings kind of thing and we
invite, personally invite anywhere between 2
and 350 people so it's a private event
and we usually invite those
who we know are going to give.
And we, that's where the bulk
of our, our funding comes from
and it all goes toward our programs
and maintaining our programs.