Mary’s Smile, founded by professional women and mothers, aims to establish a Christian-focused foster care network for traumatised children. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has worked with Mary’s Smile to provide funding to enable this organisation to place 68 vulnerable children in the homes of trained foster parents in the last six months.
Today in Hungary, 21,000 children live in state care and approximately 7,000 children do not have a foster family. The capacity of orphanages is limited because existing foster parent networks cannot recruit enough new foster parents. Most of the children have suffered extreme traumas and abuse in their original families.
Mary’s Smile identifies and trains potential foster parents to care for these children and has trained 40 new parents in the past six months. The counseling, therapy and continuous professional support has helped these foster parents overcome initial placement difficulties. Therapy for the children has also been successful. One child who was not attending school before placement in a foster home has now become an excellent student and football player.
The founders chose the name “Mary’s Smile” because they could envision Mary, the mother of Jesus, looking down on their work and smiling because of the compassionate help given to the children. This organisation is providing the tender care inspired by its name.