Every child deserves love. So, we created the Heart Gallery of Tampa to find forever families for Tampa’s foster children. These kids are just like any other kids, only they’ve experienced abuse, abandonment, and neglect. They find themselves in foster care through no fault of their own. What they need most is a family. The Heart Gallery gives them a face, a voice and a place to shine. The mission of the Heart Gallery of Tampa is to raise awareness of Tampa’s waiting foster children, engage the community in their welfare and secure permanent, loving adoptive families. THE CHILDREN Heart Gallery children represent those in foster care who need additional support in finding families due to factors of age, race, those part of large sibling groups and children with special needs. About 100 children are featured in Tampa’s Heart Gallery each year. This tool has demonstrated unprecedented success for children who have languished in care, historically hidden from the public eye. OUR HISTORY In the U.S., foster children have traditionally been hidden from view. Thousands of children languished in the foster care system, only to reach the age of 18 and find themselves on their own. But, in 2001, a photographer and an adoption worker created a unique concept to introduce these waiting children to their communities with the hope of finding loving, adoptive families. Poignant portraits of older children and sibling groups were displayed for public viewing. Appropriately named “The Heart Gallery,” this innovative model changes lives every day by giving a voice to America’s forgotten children. Over the past decade the Heart Gallery developed larger touring and interactive galleries, expanding to hundreds of cities across the country as they all work toward the shared mission of a forever family for every waiting child.