For this year’s National Adoption Month, our Heart Galleries celebrated new families at local Adoption Days across the state. And on November 19, we welcomed staff, board members, and executive leadership from all 11 Heart Galleries to Austin for a two-part gathering of galleries that offered learning and networking opportunities.
During the day, we focused on network training around expectation setting for Year 2 of the project, sharing best practices around community engagement, sustainability-building, and post-adopt collaborative work.In the evening, we celebrated all the tremendous work accomplished in Year 1 of Heart Gallery statewide expansion. Over 350 people, including University of Texas President Jay Hartzell, Texas Speaker of the House Dade Phelan, and our tireless Heart Gallery advocate First Lady of Texas Cecilia Abbott, joined us to celebrate successes from the past year, including:
- Heart Galleries featured 515 children and youth, and there were 816,000 visits to HG websites across the state
- 742 Heart Gallery exhibits were hosted across the state
- Heart Galleries had a presence at over 700 collaborative community events attended by over 45,000 people
- 201 (40% of children featured!) children were removed from the gallery after being placed in adoptive homes
We also unveiled a new campaign designed to increase awareness among prospective and current adoptive families about the Heart Gallery and available post-adopt supports.
To hear stories of how Heart Galleries have led families to connect with children and changed lives forever, watch our short storytelling video.