FYI members, wearing bright blue T-shirts with the FYI logo, spent pre-picnic time decorating the Columbus Pavilion at the park with blue and white balloons, streamers and baskets of flowers. While other volunteers grilled hot dogs and hamburgers and kept sodas chilled and bowls filled with snacks, FYI members engaged the younger children in board games, crafts and picture taking.
FYI member Nadja Bentley-Hammond, 18, expected to see her younger brother Troy Bentley. While she has spoken to him on the phone, she has not seen Troy for more than a year.
"Once they split you up, you feel really alone," said Nadja, an academy student. "It is very hard to stay in contact."
Nadja has frequently shared how at 8, teachers learned she was abused and abruptly removed her from a foster home, where she had lived for two years. She remembered carrying all her possessions in two plastic garbage bags to an emergency placement.
"It was a better place, but I didn't know that at the time," she said. Nadja refused to change her name, when that emergency family adopted her three years ago, but she did add her adoptive mother's maiden name to hers.
"I am Bentley-Hammond," she said. "I love my mother, but I'm still a Bentley. I have brothers and sisters, named Bentley."
She graduates from the academy this month and plans to study psychology at Allegheny College in the fall.
"I want to work with kids," she said. "I can tell them how to move on and not hold in the bad stuff."
FYI members Ashley and Shenika Johnson, 17-year-old twins, have lived together in a foster care kinship program, which keeps siblings together, for nearly six years. They attend different high schools and will go to Morgan and Towson universities in the fall.
"I have always known that when I come home, she will be there," said Ashley. "A lot of foster kids are not given this option."
At a photo table, FYI members took family portraits and framed the pictures for children to take home. The smiling images would give the children a memory of the day and a connection to family, they said.
Randolph says she hopes to expand FYI to other city schools and make the picnic an annual tradition.
"A lot works against these kids," she said. "Keeping contact with their families works for them."
mary.gail.hare@baltsun.com
