Arizona Helping Hands is pleased to announce that Kia America has donated $90,000 to the nonprofit’s programs for foster children and kinship families.

“We are so appreciative of community partners like Kia,” says Maureen Noe, President and CEO of Arizona Helping Hands. “With their much-needed funding, we are able to alleviate some of the obstacles that more than 14,000 Arizona foster children face each year.”

The funding from Kia will be used to support three Arizona Helping Hands programs:

• The Basic Needs Program provides essential items and bedding to children up to 21 years old as they are placed with new foster families.
• The Back to School program provides children with backpacks filled with school supplies to help them achieve success in the educational setting.
• The Foster Footlockers program provides foster children in group homes with a sense of security by allowing them a secure space to store personal keepsakes and belongings.

The organization anticipates that the donation will help provide services to more than 1,200 children across the three programs, as well as remove barriers to access to essential items that some foster and kinship families face due to cost and lack of transportation.

Arizona Helping Hands helped more than 3,500 children in 2022, including bringing beds to 1,765 children, distributing 1,622 backpacks of school supplies, and providing 483 foster footlockers. Each year, the organization’s volunteers donate about $200,000 in economic value to the mission of helping foster children. Arizona Helping Hands has built their reputation, becoming a top referral partner for the Department of Child Safety when directing new foster families or homes to local resources.

Founded in 1998, the mission of Arizona Helping Hands is to support the foster care community by providing essentials to benefit children in foster care. As Arizona’s largest provider of essential resources to children in foster care, Arizona Helping Hands supports children with items including beds, cribs, clothing, diapers, and hygiene items. Every year, Arizona Helping Hands hosts a Back-to-School drive to provide backpacks filled with school supplies to help children succeed in school. The Arizona Helping Hands Birthday Dreams program ensures each child has a birthday cake and a personalized gift to open, which helps raise self-esteem by showing children they are special and loved. The organization also provides state-required home safety items to help families become licensed providers, ensuring they can offer a safe home environment.