Amara received a generous multi-year grant totaling $2 million from the Ballmer Group earlier this year. This grant is supporting Amara’s mission to help children and families most impacted by Washington’s child welfare system. Together, Amara and the Ballmer Group intend to help transform the child welfare system in ways that reduce systemic injustice and center equity, while also helping to preserve families and prevent the need for foster care in the first place.
The child welfare system is reckoning with the trauma caused by a history of racial bias that too often separates BIPOC children from their families while simultaneously failing to protect the children the system was designed to protect – those who are abused. Amara’s work aligns with Ballmer’s goals to “improve prevention and reduce racial disparities in care.”
“Amara is deeply grateful for the continuing support of the Ballmer Group. We simply could not do the life-changing, relationship-building, family-affirming work we do without their partnership,” said Scarlett Aldebot-Green, CEO at Amara.
The new, three-year grant will allow Amara to continue to support family-reunification-focused foster caregivers, expand services for kinship families in King and Pierce counties, and grow our prevention programming that supports families before there is a need for foster care, including our new Pierce County Family Resource Center and our Parent FOCUS program currently serving the Spokane area.