PORTLAND, Ore. (KOIN) — In Oregon, around 8000 children live in foster care. Through no fault of their own these kids have come face-to-face with some really heartbreaking realities in their young lives — biological parents unable or unwilling to be a parent to their children.
That’s where places like Boys & Girls Aid come to the rescue of these children, getting them foster care and sometimes onto forever homes. In the Portland area alone Boys & Girls Aid says it needs 30 new foster homes right now.
In the first 13 years of his life young Alex Madkour lived in 11 different places. He never spent an entire year at the same school, wasn’t in one place long enough to have many buddies.
In 2016, Stephen and Jenny Madkour decided to take on Alex as a foster child and found a love of a lifetime they realized was there almost from the beginning.
“I personally think love is what makes the world go around,” Jenny Madkour said. “Without it we wither and with it we prosper and we sort of wrap ourselves in all that love every day.”
Stephen Madkour said it all feels natural.
“It feels like it was from Day One, if not beforehand, and it’s only like we’re 3 years into a lifetime journey and it’s like, you know, I said we say ‘I love you’ to each other numerous times a day.”
Regular ways of reaching out and finding new foster parents have been disrupted because of the pandemic, and the virus has prompted many people to hesitate to bring someone new into their home. While those things have slowed the demands and the needs of kids like Alex haven’t stopped.
Suzan Huntington, the CEO of Boys & Girls Aid, said foster parents can help a kid with a rough start in life become whole, and there’s no better example of that, she said, than Alex.
“He’s not being traumatized, he’s not being abused and neglected,” she said. “His brain is being able to catch up to where he’s developmentally with his peers and every single day he knows that his basic needs are going to be met and he’s going to be cared for and he’s going to be truly loved.”
Classes to become foster parents take 2-3 months. About 85% of the kids who leave the Boys and Girls Aid program graduate into permanent living situations. It is quite literally saving young lives and helping them recover from rough starts.
Simple act of being cared for and cared about has saved this young man. Alex is growing and thriving now. He’s been formally adopted by the Madkours as of October. He’s sleeping at night — not traumatized. dealing with his bad start in life — and on track for a better life as an adult.
“And at the end of the day all anybody — any of us — want is to feel that we have value and worth and we can be loved and supported and we will do better,” Huntington said.