Volunteer Opportunities with Friends of Children of Brevard
Do you love communications? Work as a PR professional? Have marketing experience? Are you a rockstar at social media? Do you want to be involved in an organization that helps children? If you said YES to any of the above, Friends of Children needs YOUR help!
We are looking for a few volunteers to join the Friends of Children Marketing Committee to assist with marketing/communications/public relations efforts for our non-profit. We are a volunteer-based organization that has one general board meeting per month and one committee meeting per month. If you're interested, please send us a message!
Friends of Children of Brevard (Friends) is also looking for committee and board members– as well as new and returning members and volunteers! We hold our meetings on the third Tuesday of the month at 6pm. Meeting are held in the Suntree area and board members may call into the meetings if they are unable to attend in person. Members of the board are expected to commit up to 10 hours per month over a term of 2 years. This is an unpaid, volunteer position.
The mission of Friends of Children is to raise funds to ensure that every abused, abandoned and neglected child in Brevard County has a GAL and that financial assistance and other resources are available for those in need. Our group supports children who have been removed from their home due to abuse, abandonment and neglect. As a non-profit 501 (C) (3), Friends funds clothing, beds, bikes, computers, diapers, school supplies, luggage, holiday gifts, duffle bags and other items not provided by government agencies. We can provide these children with some basic opportunities, such as summer camps, swimming lessons and access to other normal childhood activities. We are there to fill in the gaps. We can provide needed items that the state of Florida has not offered, such as providing a legally blind avid reader a new iPod, so she can enjoy audio books. Our funding can recognized the need for urgency over bureaucratic process. We can provide basic necessaries, such as bunk beds for a grandmother taking in her two grandchildren after the children’s drug-addicted mother was arrested in a home so filthy it was hazardous to their health.
In addition to our direct support of abused children, Friends supports the Guardian ad Litem (GAL) program, an important program that provides volunteer advocates for these abused children. These GAL volunteers, assigned by the court, offer judges the critical information they need by making independent recommendations. Our volunteers focus on the needs of each child and continue to advocate until the child is placed in loving permanent home. Research shows a child with a volunteer are much less likely to languish in long-term foster care, are moved less frequently, and are more likely to be placed with brothers and sisters. When a volunteer is involved, both children and their parents are ordered by the courts to receive more services, indicating having a volunteer advocate is effective in identifying the needs of children and parents. Our GAL volunteers prevent children from becoming stranded in the courts and foster care. Cases with an assigned volunteer are more likely to be permanently closed than cases where a volunteer is not involved and these children are more likely to be adopted. These abused children with volunteers have one consistent person advocating for them until they are either reunified with their parents or adopted.
Please consider joining Friends of Children Board and please encourage those you think would help lead our effort. Please contact us at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. if you are interested in finding out more about our organization.
Our board meetings are the third Tuesday of each month at 6pm in the Suntree area.