Zach and Tawnya Mathers of Kihei were a young couple in college on the mainland when a yearning to help vulnerable children began. Tawyna had volunteered in shelters at pregnancy resource centers. Zach, a photographer, followed a college friend to an Indonesian orphanage and later witnessed the scourge of child soldiers and prostitutes when he joined Discover the Journey, a nonprofit of journalists, artists and storytellers seeking to bring media exposure to global injustice.
Together the Matherses began traveling to South America, visiting orphanages. They wondered whether they should start their own. Watching friends foster a child a decade ago in Idaho gave them a vision for going forward.
“We realized there are plenty of kids that need our help right here in America,” Tawnya Mathers, 35, says.
They moved to Maui six years ago and are grateful to live by the ocean and raise their three children, ages 3, 6 and 11. Transferring their Idaho foster-care license to Hawaii allowed them to begin helping Maui keiki after their first year. They’ve had seven children ranging in age from 4 months to 15 years placed in their care in recent years, often providing short-term respite care to relieve other foster families. One child arrived in only a diaper, and as they watched the journey of each child and family, the Matherses realized more support was needed.
“Instead of complaining,” says Zach Mathers, 36, “we wanted to come alongside the system and support it.”
A year ago they launched Village of Hope. It partners with foster parents, social workers and individual volunteers to provide Journey Bags of essentials for children moving through the system, community engagement events for caregivers and a network of ready support, including babysitters, to an overwhelmed system or foster family.
Mary Levya of the Partners in Development Foundation, who oversees training and recruiting of foster parents in Maui County, has known the couple for four years.
“The Matherses started Village of Hope because they saw a need in our system,” she says. “When children enter care, when they are removed from their families, they usually don’t get a chance to pack and end up leaving their home with very little. Sometimes they put their belongings in a trash bag.
“The Matherses created these Journey Bags so that children could have something of their own when they went to their placements at a new foster home. All items are donated and age-appropriate.”
Journey Bags now rest in caseworkers’ offices, ready for when a child arrives. Their contents can include pacifiers, rattles and diaper supplies for the youngest, as well as toothbrushes, socks, pajamas, books, stuffed toys and an “encouraging note.”
“When we first started the Journey Bag project, we were placed with a little 7-year-old girl,” Tawnya Mathers says. “We were able to get her a backpack the first night we had her, and it was such a joy to watch her open her bag with such excitement and ownership.”
Through Village of Hope the Matherses remind volunteers and current caregivers that even if they can’t house a child, there is something everyone can do. Helping create Journey Bags or donating materials, offering to babysit, dropping off meals or providing respite care — short-term hosting of child — can make a big difference on stressed families.
“We want to help create an ohana circle around foster families,” says Zach Mathers, who has a wedding photography business.
He says foster families never know when that call is going to come for a child to arrive or leave their care. Either way, it can be a hard transition for child and family alike, and the Matherses have learned the difference any sense of stability and support can make.
From changing room arrangements at their home to managing multiple children’s schedules, to dealing with the disquiet when a child leaves the family, “everybody acts out at the beginning and at the end,” laughs Zach.
Leeann Bergeron, a controller for a property management company, emailed Tawnya to see how to get involved with babysitting or respite care. She once hosted their foster daughter.
“The placements may be short term, but they are all in,” Bergeron says of the Matherses. “For this foster daughter, I saw how much they truly loved her and put so much of themselves into providing a safe, stable, loving home for her to grow into a whole and well-adjusted little girl.
“They make the work they do look easy, but it’s not,” Bergeron adds. “They have challenges, they get tired and frustrated, but they push through it and keep working anyway.”
The Matherses share the story of a 16-year-old who stayed with them before moving on to another family. He ran away. But the teen reached out to them when he was in trouble with substance abuse. He said he remembered Zach asking him when he arrived whether there was anything the boy needed. No one had asked him that before.
“I just need your attention,” the boy said at the time. After running away he said, “I need help.”
“That’s something most adults don’t know to ask for,” says Zach.
The Matherses have attended conferences for foster caregivers on island and continue to study what trauma and a lack of attention and safety can do to any child.
“All kids are striving for that connection,” Tawnya says. “I’m trying to see the behavior of our biological kids and especially our foster kids as a cry for connection.
“We have learned and continue to learn so much through the process of fostering,” she adds. “We have learned you never really know what people are dealing with in their lives. We have learned to have grace and love even for birth parents who have done horrible things. We have learned caseworkers have probably the hardest and most thankless job in the world. And we have learned that any foster child that comes into our home comes from some sort of trauma, and no matter what we do, it will be hard, but that all kids have so much to teach us.
“Even if it’s just a few days, we have the ability to plant a seed of love and hope.”
Village of Hope is in the process of obtaining 501(c)(3) nonprofit status. In the interim, Hope Chapel in Kihei is hosting the program and accepting donations on behalf of Journey Bags.
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MORE INFORMATION
>> Contact Village of Hope via email at Aloha@villageofhopemaui.com, by calling 359-7911 or visiting villageofhopemaui.com.
>> Partners in Development Foundation will hold an informational meeting with pizza for those interested in becoming a resource caregiver (foster care provider) from noon to 1 p.m. Friday at the University of Hawaii Maui College’s Comserve Building. For more info, email Mary Leyva at mleyva@pidfoundation.org.
N.T. Arévalo is a storyteller and strategist who offers stories of pono across our land. Share your pono story and learn more at storystudiowriters.com.
