Tennessee Action Council: Ministry for At-Risk Children is a 501c3 nonprofit organization, partnering with pregnancy centers, and is comprised of two divisions: Helping Hands and Project Life, both focused on children and families.
Jacquelin McDonald, Tennessee Action Council Board President, comments: “Being involved with this ministry, knowing my efforts are truly helping women in need, saving the lives of innocent children, surrounding and helping families stay together, and maintaining the dignity and worth of traumatized children is truly God honoring work. Please join TAC in serving our community.”
Helping Hands
Tom Thompson, Tennessee Action Council Board member and Chairman of Voices for the Unspoken, a dinner event benefiting Helping Hands, says, “Helping Hands: It’s why God gave them to us.” Tom and the supporters of this organization take action to demonstrate compassion for at-risk children.
Helping Hands provides
- New, attractive, duffle bags placed in the hands of children entering the foster care system via the Department of Children’s Services
- Duffie bags help with the child’s transition during traumatic times
Children in Tennessee-9,100 of them in the foster care system typically enter a traumatic and emotional experience when they leave their homes and go into foster care. Helping Hands meets the needs of families with children at risk of being removed from their homes by protecting the dignity of the children and respect for their personal belongings. No longer must children drag around in black garbage bags the little they have. The goal? Help children feel they and their belongings are valued, not thrown into garbage bags like trash. Children feel more normal and stable- having something of their own, sometimes for the first time in their lives-when they come into custody, and later if they move from one placement to another. The attractive, new, compartmentalized duffel helps them better transition to their next opportunity and placement and confirms appreciation for their developing lives.
Project Life
Project Life provides
- Specialized mobile clinics for convenient prenatal testing and counseling
- Unique partnerships with pregnancy centers to meet community needs for testing and education
- Service to multiple geographies
The goal of Project Life-see a life, save a life-is to lease ultrasound units (costing more than$250,000 each) to existing pregnancy centers throughout the country. Project Life provides free prenatal testing, ultrasounds, education, and counseling in specialized mobile clinics to help women make informed choices about the life of their baby. Ultrasound technology helps these centers more effectively show women with unintended pregnancies that they have far more positive choices for their future and the future of their child than they might think.
Sheila E. Moss: author of Living to Matter: Mothers, Singles, and the Weary and Broken; Interrupting Women: Ten Conversations with Jesus; and international publications derived from teaching Bible and Christian ethics in Africa, Ukraine, Venezuela, and England; teacher of Bible classes for 35+ years; mother of five adult children and grandmother of eleven.
HOW YOU CAN SUPPORT: Adults and older teens help Project Life and Helping Hands through golf tournaments, encouraging their churches or other civic organizations to conduct baby bottle drives, or making donations throughout the year. Helping Hands can be supported by attending or sponsoring the annual fall dinner event, Voices for the Unspoken, on September 19, Old Natchez Country Club, Franklin, Tennessee.
