Heart Gallery

About the Program

Category: Children and Youth (Best in Category)

Year: 2017

One of Hamilton County Job and Family Services’ key functions is to find adoptive homes for children in foster care. The agency’s experience has shown that, once someone starts considering adoption, it takes about 10 contacts with the message of adoption before they decide they are ready to make the final move. The agency’s goal is to constantly reinforce the adoption message. To that end, Hamilton County developed a Heart Gallery of compelling professional portraits of children available for adoption that can be displayed in public spaces around the county, and an accompanying digital gallery. The agency worked with local photographers to build up a gallery of images and several vendors to come up with an elegant, but portable, way to display them. Each portrait tells a story. She might be the daughter of a father gripped with heroin addiction. He might be the son of a mother who can’t overcome her mental illness. He might have been his siblings’ protector, taking the brunt of the abuse so they could be spared. But these photos are not about looking back. They’re about looking forward to what could be. Each of these children has hopes and dreams of a safe, loving home. With up to 14 stands and 50 portraits, the gallery can expand or shrink to fit into spaces large and small. Those who host the gallery can ask for as many stands as they think will fit. The stands can also be configured to different heights and widths, topping out at 8 feet tall. To announce this effort, we held a gala kickoff event in April 2016. More than 100 people attended. Since then the gallery has been displayed at a dozen locations – including Great American Ball Park, Cincinnati Children’s Hospital and several churches – and literally seen by hundreds of thousands. An accompanying online Heart Gallery has more than 1,000 views and has helped increase traffic to the agency’s adoption website by nearly 100 percent.