The Brooke It Forward Foundation honors the lives of abused and fostered children by celebrating their birthdays. With the help of donors and volunteers, BIFF assembles the essentials for a birthday party into “Birthday Boxes.” The Birthday Boxes are super fun and colorful. Each box contains the items needed to celebrate an at-home party, such as cake mix, icing, party supplies, gifts, sprinkles, a birthday card, and more.
The Brooke It Forward Foundation Birthday Box project began in June 2019. That summer, our founder, Marie Rudd-Gregory, saw a story about Bella, a third grader in Kentucky, who was making birthday boxes for children in her school district who couldn’t afford a birthday party.
Two years before seeing Bella's story, Marie had lost her daughter, Brooke, in a tragic car accident. As what would have been Brooke's twentieth birthday approached, Marie reached out to the young lady's mother to donate twenty boxes in Brooke's honor. Brooke loved children. Brooke loved celebrations. Brooke was the person who remembered EVERYONE's birthday. Our founder would have been hard-pressed to find a project that was a better reflection of Brooke’s heart.
However, Bella and her family weren’t set up to take donations. Instead, Bella’s mother encouraged Marie to assemble boxes and share them in her own community. So, she did.
The Brooke It Forward Foundation assembled and delivered the first 20 birthday boxes for Children’s Advocacy Center – Hope House in Covington, Louisiana on June 12, 2019 – Brooke’s 20th birthday. Before leaving Hope House that afternoon, BIFF’s founder asked the Executive Director of Hope House, Thomas Mitchell, “how many boxes do you really need?” Sadly, Hope House and similar organizations across Louisiana and the nation each serve hundreds of children each year.
Twenty boxes simply wouldn’t do. The rest, as they say, is history. Realizing that we’d only scratched the surface of a need, The Brooke It Forward Foundation was officially born.
Since the first boxes were delivered, Brooke It Forward Foundation has now delivered over 1,700 Birthday Boxes. BIFF now serves six children’s advocacy centers and 3 CASA (court-appointed special advocates programs) across 18 parish in South Louisiana. And, we are growing!
When Brooke It Forward Foundation began gifting Birthday Boxes – we just thought that we were providing a little ray of sunshine for children in need. What we’ve learned over the years is that the boxes are so much more.
The Birthday Boxes provide foster care givers with an opportunity to bond with the child in their care. The Birthday Boxes supply the items needed to engage in a positive child-focused activity. The process of baking and decorating a cake and celebrating the child’s birthday engages all five senses in a meaningful and healing way.
Social workers who deliver the Birthday Boxes to the children have asked, “why didn’t someone think of this sooner?”
We don’t know the answer, but maybe it just took the heart of a child to recognize the need. Thank you, Bella from Kentucky for sharing your beautiful project!
