About Ezekiel Farms
Healing Wings Ministry is stepping up to help combat the foster care crisis. Ezekiel Farms will host at least 7 foster homes on one shared property. Unlike an orphanage which gives the feeling of being institutionalized, Eziekiel Farms offers actual homes with family. This is a community of families working together to raise up these kids in a loving and supportive environment.
How It Works
Cost Estimation
Ezekiel Farms will take the prayerful and financial commitment of investors working together to purchase the property and to prepare the land and homes. Once families begin living on the farm, it will, overtime become self-sufficient through the sale of produce, goods and livestock.
How Can You Help
We are looking for those who are able to financially support this project. We need investors for real estate purchasing. Once Ezekiel Farms is established, we will be looking for community members to share their time, love, and talents with the kids. We welcome classes on any life skill: baking, cooking, sewing, gardening, hunting, job skills and more. We are always looking for mentors, even now as we run Camp RESET. Prayerfully consider how you may partner with us today. Contact us for more information on how to get started.
Plan and Design
The main home will house older kids who are transitioning out of foster care to provide the permanency they need for a stable transition into adulthood. They will be taught life and job skills and longingly guided into their next steps in life.
The farmland will be shared by all families. They work together to care for crops and livestock, which provides food and income for the community. The children will learn job and life skills including how to be interdependent within the community. Families gather for meals in the main house as meal preparation and clean-up are shared between each member. This creates a strong feeling of family and belonging. Foster Families are strengthened and encouraged as the work together rather than alone.
What is the need?
All children — and especially older children in foster care — need and deserve a loving family with no expiration date. Yet, in the United States, about 20,000 youth exit foster care and are left to fend for themselves each year.
This scenario — leaving foster care without achieving permanence — carries lifelong consequences. Youth who age out of foster care are more likely to engage in risky behaviors and more likely to experience hardships such as homelessness, joblessness, early parenthood and substance use.
In the state of Tennessee, the rate of children entering foster care has increased dramatically. Children enter foster care because their birth families cannot safely care for them.
On average, there are approximately 7,500 children in foster care and around 350 children in full guardianship (available for adoption) in Tennessee who don’t have an identified adoptive home. Approximately 1,000 children age out of care in Tennessee every year.
As a result of inadequate number of foster homes available, children who, at no fault or need of their own, are being placed in hospital and high-risk facilities. These children do not belong in this environment but there are no other options available.
