Group Homes

We often hear about children in our Pajama Program reading groups who are transferred -- children we'll probably never see again. I can't help but won...

It was amazing to see him nestling close to her in complete silence, as she read to him page by page. Genna had no idea about Timothy's past behavior. She had no idea what magic had happened.

As the children came into the room to sit and read with me, I gave each one a pair of pajamas. One little girl wouldn't take pajamas from me. She stood perfectly still, looked up at me, and asked in a whisper, "What are these?"

A little boy once asked me, "If the children don't have moms, how do they grow up?" He looked very puzzled. It was a good question and I didn't have a good answer for him.

Laura and her young friend Maurice, shared meals at the start of their relationship, but it wasn't until an impromptu conversation about lunchtime did Laura learn the true meaning of a brown bag lunch.

I have always felt enormous compassion for the teenagers in foster care. Recently, I got to know a woman named Ivy.

It's time to find a bigger space and make our next NYC Reading Center just as magical, even more so. This has become our home and it's tearing me apart to leave, but I know it's time.

Many of the girls in the group homes have been moved often. They've been taken away from their natural homes, sometimes shuffled between relatives and then foster homes. A group home can be just another stop for them.

So many of you have helped us grow and work harder and faster every year to reach more and more children in need. Your encouragement has fueled us to set our goals higher and higher.

Pajama Program exists for a very simple reason: it reflects the child that lives within all of us, the child who is desperate for love, to belong, to matter to someone, even just to snuggle up on someone's lap.

Books and pajamas provide not only bedtime comfort and pretty pictures, they are often the only clean clothes a child has at the time and the only reading opportunity they'll have for a while.

In 10 years I can say a lot has surprised me. But what strikes me as unforgivable every single day is that thousands of children never enjoy the simple comfort of having a mother or father tuck them in at bedtime with warm, clean pajamas and a bedtime story.

This story was reported in collaboration with our partners at Patch.com. When people ask Stanley Ligas, a 43-year-old with Down syndrome, why he wa...

The Americans with Disabilities Act was written to include persons with intellectual disabilities, our challenge is to ensure that, in practice, it does just that.

As part of our Bearing Witness 2.0 project, the Huffington Post is rounding up compelling local stories about the victims of the recession. Group ho...