KANSAS CITY, Mo. — A Kansas City-area influencer and content creator is using her platform to help kids that sometimes get forgotten around the holidays.
Emily Fauver has more than a million followers on Instagram and more than four million on TikTok, but it’s what she experienced before she launched those pages that makes her efforts around the holidays so personal.
St. Louis area wish lists:
“I grew up in foster care,” Fauver said. “I was adopted when I was eight, and my sister was in the system until she was 18. So she was in a group home and actually aged out.”
That gave Fauver a lot of opportunities to see how tough that life can be.
“We would go visit her and, I’m telling you, there was nothing in her room except the sheets on her bed,” Fauver said. “A lot of these homes didn’t even have a Christmas tree.”
Melissa Carter says the roughly 40 kids in her car through Home Court Advantage Inc.’s group homes face similar challenges.
“Some wont have anyone show up [around the holidays] and there will be nothing,” Carter said.
So, it’s why she admits she was a little wary when Fauver reached out three years ago, offering to post a gift list on her social media pages and encourage her followers to buy what the kids wanted.
This year, the 100 gifts requested by 40 kids went in minutes.
“It’s amazing, it’s amazing,” Carter said. “In less than five minutes, it’s gone.”
Fauver says its a good chance to educate her followers on the foster care system and the challenges foster care kids can face. But when Carter’s staff members write Thank You notes, they find out the reasons for giving are often more personal.
“Several of them, the reason they donated and they follow Emily is because they’ve been in the same situation,” Carter said.
It’s become a yearly tradition now and Fauver’s followers have already cleared 10 wish lists with more to be posted in the next few days.
“Group homes are some of my favorite to help because I feel like I’m giving back to my sister,” Fauver said.
Fauver said she and her sister still talk, and that she has a family in California.
