Freecycle, the North Georgia Foster Parent Support Group, and Excess Access

We all find our­selves with “stuff” that we just don’t need any more. The more we declut­ter, the more of that we’ve come across. I decid­ed to post about a few great ways to make sure that stuff gets to those who do need it.

North Geor­gia Fos­ter Par­ent Sup­port Group:
They take clothes, books, toys, videos, CDs, stuffed ani­mals, and any kind of baby/kid/teen stuff at all. Yes, all dona­tions are tax-deductible.

These are the kinds of things they try to pro­vide for fos­ter kids, and that they need to have donated:
Clothes, bathing suits, shoes, san­dals, hats, bibs, train­ing pants, new under­wear, new socks, hats, ties, cribs, tod­dler beds, high chairs, strollers, infant car seats, tod­dler car seats, boost­er car seats, playpens, gates, infant swings, baby bath­tubs, walk­ers, excer-saucers, front car­ri­er packs, back­packs, for­mu­la, bot­tles, dia­pers, sip­py cups, toys, car seat cov­ers, bumper pad sets, crib sheets, some twin sheets, blan­kets, baby tow­els, mon­i­tors, pic­ture frames, infant wall dec­o­ra­tions, mobiles, stuffed ani­mals, and a few oth­er things in between.

Of course, they take mon­ey, too. And they need volunteers!

They have an espe­cial­ly hard time get­ting cloth­ing and oth­er items for teenagers. Since the vast major­i­ty of kids in fos­ter care in Geor­gia are teenagers, this is espe­cial­ly dif­fi­cult. So if you’re an adult with cloth­ing you’ve out­grown or grown tired of or what­ev­er, remem­ber that there’s prob­a­bly a teen who can wear it and needs it.

ga_sunshine, I’d real­ly appre­ci­ate it if you’d do a post of your own (or reply here—whatever you like)—or heck, write some­thing and I’ll put it on the web. Any­way, SOMEHOW, let peo­ple know the finan­cial real­i­ty of fos­ter care. I cer­tain­ly had NO idea of how poor­ly sup­port­ed fos­ter fam­i­lies are before get­ting to know you, and I’m cer­tain there are many oth­er peo­ple who don’t real­ize that, either.

Freecy­cle is just incred­i­ble. From their website:
The world­wide (!) Freecy­cle Net­work is made up of many indi­vid­ual groups across the globe. It’s a grass­roots move­ment of peo­ple who are giv­ing (& get­ting) stuff for free in their own towns. Each local group is run by a local vol­un­teer mod­er­a­tor (them’s good peo­ple). Mem­ber­ship is free.…

RISE start­ed the Freecy­cle Net­work in May 2003 to pro­mote waste reduc­tion in Tuc­son’s down­town and help save the desert land­scape from being tak­en over by land­fills. Freecy­cle pro­vides indi­vid­u­als and non-prof­its an elec­tron­ic forum to “recy­cle” unwant­ed items. One per­son­’s trash can tru­ly be anoth­er’s trea­sure!

In the past month or so, I’ve seen fur­ni­ture, appli­ances, cloth­ing, baby sup­plies, vehi­cles (and parts), sports equip­ment, kitchen stuff, and com­put­er equip­ment offered and sought (suc­cess­ful­ly!) through the Atlanta list. There is no “trad­ing” and there are no ads for any­thing for sale—it’s all free.

Notice of pos­si­ble bias: I’m the back­up mod­er­a­tor for the Atlanta Freecy­cle list.

I haven’t per­son­al­ly used Excess Access, but the oth­er mod­er­a­tor for the Atlanta Freecy­cle list has rec­om­mend­ed them for items that aren’t claimed via Freecycle.