Departing Board Member Kara Tanoue Reflects on the Joy and Importance of Serving Kinship Families
“It's been amazing to watch how people have chosen to invest in us and allow this organization to grow.”
In April, we said goodbye to longtime Seeds Community Center volunteer and board member Kara Tanoue, as she and her family prepare for an out-of-state move this summer.
After serving as one of Seeds Community Center’s first volunteers, Kara joined the board of directors in 2015, serving as board secretary and using her skills in data science and community needs assessment to boost the organization’s work in the Peter Howell neighborhood, which was the focus of Seeds at that time. When Seeds Community Center relaunched in 2018 with a mission to serve foster-kinship families, Kara remained on the board and played a critical role in establishing the new direction. She served as board treasurer beginning in mid-2021.
We asked Kara to reflect on her tenure at Seeds Community Center and the growth she helped advance in the last decade:
What first drew you to volunteering with Seeds Community Center and then to serving on the board of directors?
I first started volunteering back when Seeds was working on a community needs assessment. Since this was an area of expertise I had through work, it made sense as a way to practically contribute. It turned out that my experience as a program evaluator was a really good fit for some of the needs that Seeds had. When Seeds relaunched in 2018, Christe [LePeau, executive director] asked if I'd like to stay on, and I did, because I knew that my skillset could be helpful and because I really believed in the vision that Christe and Danell Jessup (our first board president) had laid out.
Is there a particular moment or accomplishment that stands out to you?
One was the holiday party we held for our kinship families in 2019. It was full of joy and wriggly, silly children, and a lot of fun to put on, but we also didn't know that it was going to be one of our last in-person events for more than a year. The COVD-19 pandemic was a challenging time for everyone, and Seeds had to adapt to support families throughout that time. It meant that we essentially had to relaunch a nonprofit twice—first in 2018, then again after COVID.
The second would be Arizona Gives Day, from the very first year in 2021, when we didn't know what to expect but brought in nearly $4,000 (more than half our operating expense for the prior year). And it really grew from there; it's been amazing to watch how people have chosen to invest in us and allow this organization to grow.
What is something you think everyone should know about kinship caregiving/families?
Kinship families are incredibly common. According to the most recent estimates from the American Community Survey, there are nearly 50,000 children living in kinship care, formally and informally in Arizona.
Kinship care has been part of being human for a really long time. The practice of a relative or a close family friend stepping in and caring for children in times of need is seen across many cultures. In a lot of ways, our current societal setup here in the U.S. that so focuses on the isolated nuclear family is really unusual, and it can make it hard for kinship caregivers, because we don't have a lot of language for this and so many of our systems assume that a parent is always the one caring for a child.
Supporting kinship families and making kinship care possible is really important for seeking justice. Black and Indigenous children have been overrepresented in the child welfare system for a long time, due to both a history in this country that has contributed to higher rates of poverty in many Black and Indigenous communities, as well as a history of intentional forced removal of Indigenous children from their families. Kinship care keeps children within the extended network of family and friends who know them and care for them and keeps them connected to their culture, and this leads to better outcomes for these children.
Kinship families need support. Usually the events that lead to kinship caregivers involve some sort of trauma for a child, be it a separation from their parent due to a deployment or out-of-state job, instances of abuse or neglect, or the death of a parent—and they often happen without a lot of warning. This means that kinship caregivers are navigating a lot of big changes quickly with both a child (or multiple children) who needs extra care and a lot of complicated bureaucratic systems to deal with. I think this is why the work that Seeds does is so valuable, recognizing that one of the things that these families need is a space for them to sit with other people in the same beautiful, complicated, exhausting situations and be seen. We can make that space.
Is there anything else you would like to share?
It has been such a joy to watch this organization grow from an idea that Christe and Danell (and others) were talking about to a formal organization that has staff and a board that fully fills the table. It was such an honor to help build this organization (and rebuild after the pandemic), and I really look forward to seeing what has yet to come.
Thank you for your service, Kara. Seeds Community Center would not be what it is today without your thoughtful, consistent contributions across the years!
