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Culture | Nov. 2023

ALL HEART

By Bill McLean

ILLUSTRATION BY BARRY BLITT

Annie McAveeney

Nsw 1111 37

Annie McAveeney often asks acquaintances to imagine.

It’s a highly effective visual exercise. It’s also jolting and harrowing, given the subject matter that concerns McAveeney every day.

“Imagine being a couch-hopping child staying in a garage in the middle of the winter and then waking up with no access to a shower,” she says.

“Imagine,” she adds, “not having toiletries or decent clothing and staying away from school because you’re worried about being shamed by your peers.

“Imagine,” McAveeney continues, “knowing a girl who keeps going back to her abuser only because he feeds her.”

McAveeney, a Lake Forest resident, doesn’t have to imagine any of the above scenarios. They’re all real to her. Too real. The children have names. They’re also just a few of the reasons she continues to run Fill a Heart 4 Kids (FAH4K), a lifesaving and life-changing organization—it’s now a nonprofit—she formed in 2007.

It supported 38 at-risk children 16 years ago.

Today, FAH4K supports more than 2,400 foster and homeless children annually by providing critical necessities, food, clothing, educational support, life skills opportunities, and enriching hands-on volunteer opportunities to build brighter futures for kids. In partnership with teachers, social workers, principals, and vetted social service organizations, FAH4K works to help the most vulnerable children heal, feel valued, and receive critical resources from the community.

“We’ve never seen so many children in need as we do now,” McAveeney says, alluding to the approximately 25,000 unaccompanied homeless youth and nearly 3,400 foster youth waiting to be adopted in Illinois. “Do you know what a $10 gift card (to a fast food restaurant) means to a child we support? It means eight meals, and each visit allows them to sit in a warm place and use a washroom to wash their hands. A full stomach then enables them to focus at school, which, for many, is a safe haven when they’re not being bullied for failing to hide their homelessness.

“We’re thrilled when we see increases in confidence and attendance at school. One good deed can change a child’s future, can give a child hope. And if a child feels loved, they succeed in school.”

Fill a Heart 4 Kids recently opened its new two-story location at 1 Market Square Court in Lake Forest. Chicago- based New City Moving moved the organization there from its temporary space—a pop-up shop at 270 Market Square—in June.

“The moving company’s owner, Brian Slater, was homeless off and on as a child,” McAveeney says. “He didn’t just help us move; he also sponsored our tech room.”

That room is not far from the kitchen, where cooking classes are taught to budding chefs. Fields Auto Group sponsored the construction of the kitchen. Dan Fields serves as the dealer’s president, and his wife, Amy, teaches cooking classes at FAH4K each Saturday.

“Amy loves to teach and would go to the ends of the earth for our children,” McAveeney says, adding a neurologist and a nutritionist, among professionals from other fields, have inspired wide-eyed, grateful children at FAH4K’s warm home, which was transformed into Santa’s Workshop on November 8.

“Most are convinced they’re at the North Pole as soon as they walk in,” McAveeney says.

Craig Nielsen, of Nielsen- Massey Vanillas, has filled the kitchen’s cabinets with pots and pans and mixers. Riverwoods-based Discover Financial Services has sponsored more than one thousand FAH4K meals.

Attorney Jennifer Guy has been finding time to assist McAveeney and help organize FAH4K’s wide range of projects and programs for the past two years. Her FAH4K title?

“Angel,” McAveeney says. At-risk children need coats now. So FAH4K launched Project Warm. Among FAH4K’s other critical offerings are Weekend Food Bags, Toiletries 4 Dignity, Healing Art classes, and Glow Project Cocoa ™.

“We learned of a four-year-old boy who had lived in 12 homes in a year,” McAveeney says. “One of his ‘homes’ was an attic, if you can believe that. What helped him a lot was the glow-in-the-dark thermos in our Glow project.”

Individuals can sponsor a Thanksgiving meal for $35 this year. McAveeney and a host of volunteers plan to welcome and feed children at the FAH4K location on November 22, the day before Thanksgiving.

“Children who enter our building never want to leave it,” McAveeney says. “They see the balloons and the decorations, all kinds of bright colors everywhere, and then they feel safe, instantly. They feel empowered here, too. A group of our children made jewelry and sold items worth $2,400. Now they want to invest the money and make more jewelry.

“They’re going to meet with a financial adviser at Lake Forest Bank & Trust,” adds the Woodlands Academy of the Sacred Heart graduate. “Isn’t that wonderful? And they’re even putting together a field trip (to Shedd Aquarium) for themselves. How great is that?”

The McAveeney family—Annie, husband Jay and their daughters, Ellorie and Lilly— welcomed an infant in need of a temporary home in 2007. “The experience,” according to the FAH4K website, “exposed them to a world of vulnerable children couch-hopping, living in abandoned buildings, cars, and garages, or living in underfunded foster care facilities and group homes.”

Now a teenager, and a FAH4K volunteer, that adored addition is a permanent member of the McAveeney family today.

“There are two worlds, with too many homeless children suffering in one of them,” McAveeney says. “Their stories are dark ones. But we who live in the other world can brighten those lives. It doesn’t take much to do that. We have thousands of volunteers, including those at our contracted schools, but we need sponsors, especially during the holidays.

“The holiday season,” she adds, “can be a frightening time for homeless children. School is out, which means no meal at school. They’ll be hungry and desperate, and close to finding themselves in dangerous situations. We need to be there for them. We need to rally.”

Fill a Heart 4 Kids is located at 1 Market Square Court in Lake Forest, behind the Starbucks on Western Avenue and near Williams Sonoma. For more information about FAH4K, or to sponsor any of its projects, visit fillaheart4kids.org or call 847-867-1000.

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