Mall Exhibit Puts A Face On Foster Parenting
By DAVID SCHNEIER

It's not just art. The pictures of children-happy and hopeful-that currently adorn Queens Center Mall are there to raise awareness for foster parenting.

Timed for the Back-to-School shopping season, the exhibit highlights the 17,000 foster children in New York City.

The huge pictures on the first floor of the mall stand 74 inches high by 44 inches wide. A table with workers; for inquiries will be stationed there until Sept. 14.

Heart Gallery executive director Laurie Graff and Little Flower CEO Herbert Stupp with one of the oversized photos promoting forster parenting at Queens Center Mall.

Hip-hop artist Darryl "DMC" McDaniels, a foster child himself, and Jeanette Bayardelle, a Broadway actress for "The Color Purple," were on hand to kick off the exhibit. Eight formerly abused children were picked up by limousine, walked out onto a red carpet and given gift certificates to shop at the mall.

"Unfortunately, we can't bring them all in," said Laurie Graff, executive director of Heart Gallery NYC.

For Heart Gallery, it is the second time they have come to Queens Center Mall. The exhibit has been to Penn Station, Grand Central Station, Kings Plaza and will soon go to LaGuardia Airport.

Last year at Queens Center Mall, they facilitated 200 inquires.

Hundreds of potential parents are now in the nearly year-long training program. They also partner with Big Brothers and Big Sisters so children can "have a positive adult role model" in their lives, Graff said.

Since 1929, Little Flower Children and Family Services has helped foster kids from infancy through 21 years of age. Little Flower nine residences, servicing nearly 1,000 kids, 400 of them in Queens, said CEO Herbert Stupp.

Grandmaster Flash, the hip-hop originator, was a foster child as is his publicist. She recently spoke to the children about her own experience in Little Flowers.

When four-year-old Valerie Lozada was found wandering the streets late at night in 2005 in Middle Village, after being abandoned by her parents, child services got involved. By dawn that same day, Little Flowers had found her a home, Stupp said.

"Each foster child has had a different route…but in general, they all want permanency, whether it means long-term foster care or a simple adoption with a grandparent, aunt, uncle or a stranger they connect with," Stupp said. "You could see if their personalities click, if this could be a family."

For more information about becoming a foster parent or being a mentor, call Little Flowers at (800) 323-0316.