Connecting the community with opportunities to serve Oklahoma’s children affected by abuse, neglect, and abandonment.

OK Foster Wishes coordinates with OKDHS to receive foster children’s holiday wish lists from all over the state; 2019 is the third year OICA has coordinated this effort. We will partner with the community to distribute the wish lists through businesses, organizations, and individuals as a direct gift to a child in custody.

The effort has brought great awareness to the foster care issue by safely lifting the veil of confidentiality to show that children in foster care are not nameless, faceless kids, who many believe that the government is solely responsible for, but real kids just like kids in our neighborhood who have the same hopes, dreams and wants.

This year, OKDHS has designated all “Wish Lists” not taken by other organizations be managed through OK Foster Wishes and the Oklahoma Institute for Child Advocacy. This means that more than 5,000 wish lists will be coordinated by OICA and OK Foster Wishes in 2019, and your help is needed to make these dreams come true for the foster kids you directly help by filling one or more lists.

Ways to Help!

We are at the point where need financial contributions. It takes a budgeted $40,000 to meet the remaining gift needs of foster children and to administer the program – especially the 30-children-per-day that enter the foster system during the holidays. That money goes to fund a pair of special shopping excursions to fill the unfilled lists and to stock the Santa Store for those children; these are kids entering the system too late to fill out a wish list. Thank you all for your work to help Oklahoma’s foster children have a joyous holiday season!