The Four Of Hearts Foundation

Today we gave all of the adult clothing and shoes that have been donated to us to the Utah YWCA! It was a great experience to talk with Mr. Findley when he came to pick everything up! He was very kind and greatful for all of the items that were donated! His wife Laura runs the Kathleen Robison Huntsman appartment complex where women who are victims of domestic violence and their children get shelter from their abusers. We were so happy to be able to help such a worthy cause! The men's clothing that has come to us will also be distributed by them to the men in a homeless shelter in Salt Lake. What a true blessing it is for us to be able to pass on the donations we have been given, to these men, women and children. We look forward to working with them in the future and wish them the best in their work with these individuals. Below is a small bit of information from their website, please take a minute to check out what they are doing for these individuals and families! Mostly we want to thank all of those who have donated adult items to us over the last year. Though these things are not what we can use in the programs we are working on, we have found a wonderful cause to pass on your donations to! THANK YOU! The Four of Hearts Team
www.ywca.com
The Kathleen Robison Huntsman Program, established in 1998, is the only transitional housing program in Utah of its scope and scale, specifically designed to address the effects of domestic violence on women and children.  Its goal is to help homeless women and children recover from domestic violence, become self-sufficient, and obtain permanent housing. The program has the capacity to serve up to 36 low-income women and 124 children who are victims of domestic violence.  Participants stay up to two years as they work to overcome their experiences with domestic violence, become economically self-sufficient, and obtain permanent housing.

WOW! What a great success! After all 3 childrens sales that we have been involved in this last month we are excited to report that we have raise approximately $3600!!!! We are so excited about this! We have spoken with Vicki who runs the orphanage in Los Robles and have allocated this money to feed the children in the feeding program for the next 6 months! We are so happy to know that our hard work is feeding the kids in the village!
Vicki asked if a few hundred dollars could be allocated for the new "pre-natal" program they started this week for the pregnant women in the village and around the village! What an amazing experience to know that these women will recieve classes at the center (orphanage), a dozen eggs and a bag of Incaparina each week throughout their pregnancies because of our efforts! We pray for them all and that this will help those babies come into the world much healthier and that this will also aid the mothers' health and hopefully help their nutrition levels, so that they might be able to breast feed when their babies are born! We are continuing our efforts to collect cans of formula and there is a group leaving on June 1st that will be taking the formula with them to distribute! What an amazing feeling to know that we are feeding hundreds of children and babies and now helping the expectant mothers! Our new fundraiser will be cow-pie bingo! Our goal is to raise enough with this to buy the water purification systems  for each of the 47 families in Los Robles by the end of summer! Then, off to the fall childrens sales to raise more funds for the feeding program! It is great to see our efforts paying off and we are so excited to share our success with all of you!! Thank you all for your support! Blessings!
The Four of Hearts Team

Well, its been a crazy 2 months working hard for the 3 childrens sales! The first sale we raised about $1400, we had the second sale last weekend and do not have our reports yet, but are possitive! This weekend is the BIG sale with JBF and we are really excited and Exhausted- we may sleep for a week after this! All of us have been working every day tagging doanted items to put in the sale- over 3800! We are so grateful to Amy and her staff at JBF who have whole heartedly "adopted" us as their chairty! She has come up with so many great ideas to help us! We really appreciate them and look forward to spending the next 3 days with them at the sale! Wish us luck and we will post when we know our totals!

Blake saw an ad posted by a local family needing a walker for their mother who has been in and out of the hospital the last few months, he called and told them about the foundation and that we would like to donate a walker to them and gave the man my number. I got a call this morning and this afternoon was able to deliver a wheelchair, and 2 different walkers to them. Being out of work and worried about their loved one's safety and health, little things like this are hard to deal with. I was really proud of Blake for answering the call and grateful that we as a foundation could fill a need for another family. We want them to know we wish them luck and pray she will be doing much better soon! 

When news of the earthquakes in Haiti came, we as the whole world watched in horror as we saw the devastation there. Our hearts went out to the people of Haiti and all of us wanted to do something to help. We looked into a few things and quickly realized it would be difficult to accomplish. Just last week one of our new team members Skyler Crump, decided to do his eagle scout project to gather items for Haiti! A friend of his father's has a private jet that was planning to leave on the 11th with humanitarian aid! Skyler contacted T.J. and Jake and asked if the foundation could help! We were all so excited! We made up a flyer and delivered 200 of them. We called friends and neighbors and sent out emails! We made a trip to our FOH storage unit and brought home bags and bags of clothing items that have been donated to us! For the last 5 days we have been going through bags and boxes, separating clothes, and boxing items to send! Last night we finished! We are sending 14 boxes of clothing, 1 box of sandals, 1 box of 147 cloth diapers, 6 boxes packed with over 100 blankets, and 5 tents!! All of this will be delivered to an orphanage and those living close by, about 40 min. from the city of Port O Prince. We would like to thank all of those who donated items to this cause and thank Skyler for including us in his project and allowing us to help these children and families in Haiti! 

As a foundation we have made a few changes. We want everyone to be aware of those. A board of directors has been added to help the boys with planning and finances. As parents we want to support them all in their goals with the foundation! Blake (President) and A.J. (V.P) are working very hard at school and are in the running to win the state debate competition! If they do win and make it to Nationals this spring it could mean a full scholarship for each of them! They are working long, hard hours toward this goal and we are committed to taking some of the "busy" work off of their plates for a while to help them succeed! The other boys are also working hard at school to maintain their grades and set an example of the importance of education,we are so proud of all of them! This in NO WAY changes the foundation our its goals in the future. This is a foundation run by teens and they are the ones doing the bulk of the work toward goals. We have merely stepped in (officially) to help out and give them the support they need to succeed! We have recently added several new members and will continue to update you. We want to tell the boys how proud we are of all of them and let Blake and A.J. know we will do our best to help them in any way! We love you all! Mom, Dad & Kara