North Dakota
How a new partnership is helping spotlight North Dakota kids waiting for adoption
FARGO — Many children awaiting adoption in foster care have to wait a long time before finding their adoptive families. Some never do.
Eight years ago in Minnesota a project was created to help children and teens find permemant homes through customized videos that feature a foster child’s unique personality and interests.
Fastforward to 2024 and the project now finds itself making impacts across North Dakota.
The
Reel Hope Project is a Minneapolis-based organization that specializes in customized videos
for children awaiting adoption. The videos allow waiting youth to connect to potential adopters through expertly crafted videos that are widely shared online.
Contributed / The Reel Hope Project
The project began working in North Dakota just a few months ago after being approached by
Adults Adopting Special Kids
(AASK) – a Fargo-based adoption service through Catholic Charities North Dakota.
The two foster care groups say the newfound partnership is a game-changer for adoption in North Dakota, one that is anticipated to have big impacts for kids in the coming years.
Treated like a movie star
AASK Program Director Kara Eastlund said the new collobartion “has been phenomenal.”
Adding video allows her team to feature the personalities of kids in a way that goes beyond words and a photo.
The videos highlight each child in a brand new way and bring more awareness and connections by being shared online, making it easier for waiting children to find their match.
Contributed / The Reel Hope Project
The concept hasn’t been done before in North Dakota, Eastlund said.
Weeks before The Forum intervieweed the two foster care groups, a North Dakota boy in the foster care system was adopted thanks in part to the new video format.
Abby Marino, the director of operations and outreach at The Reel Hope Project, said the boy’s video premiered across social media sites like
and
and garnered over 40 inquiries from potential adoptive households.
Those kinds of inquiry numbers are huge, Eastlund said, and difficult to obtain.
Often, the videos prompt prospective adoptive parents to get licensed, Marino added, and push them to connect with adoption agencies to start the process.
On top of all of that, the North Dakota kids who have made videos so far have really enjoyed the process, Eastlund said.
The youth have a lot of input into what goes into the video, Marino said, and the end goal is for each child to feel celebrated and valued.
“Kids are enjoying it,” Eastland said. “It’s really a way to show them how incredible they are.”
Before the film crew arrives, The Reel Hope Project team works with each child and their care team to help pick out a fun activity that the kid wants to do during the video.
What follows is a fun day out where each child is treated like a movie star.
“We want it to be a fun day for them,” Marino said, as well as a confidence boost during the adoption process.
Contributed / Catholic Charities North Dakota
‘No child should be waiting’
On any given day there are between
20 to 30 kids in North Dakota
who are waiting for a permanent home, Eastlund said. Children find themselves in the foster care system for a variety of reasons.
All kids that come into foster care have had some level of abuse or neglect in their life, she said, and if they are seeking an adoption that means they weren’t able to be reunified with their birth family. In those cases it means that their parents’ parental rights were terminated.
Losing birth parents, no matter the circumstances, is often extremely difficult for a young person.
“Every child that we work with has experienced immense trauma; immense loss,” Eastlund said. Many children experienced neglect or abuse.
Finding homes and families for the kids not only provides them with a place to call home but also helps them heal from the past, she added.
“No child should be waiting,” Eastlund said. “One is too many.”
Older children often face extra hurdles to finding their forever homes, Eastlund continued, adding that it takes the right family to jump into parenting an adolescent or teenager. They make up a large portion of children waiting in foster care.
These kids might require extra time and care from their new family and often have family connections that they want to maintain, Eastland said. It’s important for the child that their adoptive families support these relationships, she added.
Raising awareness for tweens and teens awaiting adoption is near and dear to The Reel Hope Project’s heart as well.
Contributed / The Reel Hope Project
The project was created in 2016 after founder Kaycee Stanley saw a need for innovative changes in the adoption field. She met her adopted teenage son on the day of his own video shoot, Marino said.
There hasn’t been a lot of change in child recruitment efforts over the decades across the nation, Marino said, and the introduction of video shakes things up.
The project
relies on private donations to fund their work
and now operates in seven states, with a goal to have a footprint in all 50 states, according to Marino. The
webpage features galleries
of kids up for adoption,
including in North Dakota.
“What fuels me is how effective it is,” Marino said. “Over half of the kids that we’ve made a (video) for since 2016 have been adopted.”
The average age of a child they feature in a video is 12 years old, Marino said.
“Oftentimes, if a child has been in the system for several years, or they reach teenage age, the added recruitment resource of a profile video can be a game changer,” Marino wrote in a message to The Forum.
The Reel Hope Project’s videography team now comes in on the regular to meet with North Dakota kids. The organization has six videos planned for 2024 and have five more in the works so far, said Marino, adding once a child is adopted, the video is deleted to protect privacy.
While the efforts have helped many kids find homes, some do age out of the system without ever finding a family. Those kids often face some “scary statistics,” Eastlund said.
Those who fall out of the system are at higher risk of experiencing homelessness, unplanned pregnancies, trafficking, addiction or incarceration, she said.
“There is a lot of general trauma that is happening right now in the foster care system across the county,” Marino said.
Adoption mitigates these outcomes for youth, Marino said, and helps them handle the hand that they were dealt.
“We’ve found that the power of video breaks through all of those labels,” Marino said. “It helps people remember that these are just kids and they need a family.”
FARGO — Drivers can expect to see a slight uptick in gas prices as a result of the Iran conflict.
As of Monday, March 2, the average for North Dakota is $2.65 a gallon. While that is a $0.13 increase from a month ago, it is significantly lower than prices a year ago.
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GRAND FORKS – The Study ND, formerly Humanities North Dakota, has received $15,000 from the National Endowment for the Arts for a statewide theater and humanities initiative in recognition of the 250th anniversary of the founding of the United States.
This commemorative investment is meant to bring historical events and figures – such as the framers of the U.S. Constitution – to life through virtual and live performances that celebrate the nation’s history.
The grant, along with funding from private sources, has made it possible for The Study ND to host “America 250” activities after the organization sustained a considerable cut in funding from the National Endowment for the Humanities last year, according to Brenna Gerhardt, The Study ND executive director.
“We absorbed a 50% budget cut, resulting in a loss of $467,645 in funding,” Gerhardt said. “As a result, we had to significantly scale back our American 250 initiatives focused on American history and civics education.”
Funds received from the National Endowment for the Arts will be used to present public readings, theatrical portrayals and guided discussions to encourage audience members to reflect on the nation’s founding in 1776 and on its democratic ideals, while engaging in contemporary conversations about civic life.
All of the programming in the series organized by The Study ND, titled “American Heroes,” will be livestreamed statewide.
In the grant application submitted to the National Endowment for the Arts, “we framed the project around a simple idea: democracy requires more than information, it requires citizens who can think historically, listen well, and argue in good faith,” Gerhardt said.
“This series uses living history performances to bring consequential figures into the room, then turns the room into a civic space through moderated dialogue and related public events. We define ‘heroism’ as civic courage under pressure, the willingness to contend with hard truths, and the capacity to enlarge a community’s moral imagination,” she said.
“The project does not ask audiences to agree on a single interpretation of a figure. It invites them to grapple with complexity together, and to connect the past to the responsibilities of the present.”
When Gerhardt and her colleagues received the application for grant proposals from the National Endowment for the Arts, “we were already planning a line-up of America 250 events and it fit perfectly with what we were already planning, so then we just wrote the grant,” she said.
Private funds, including matching funds from the Bismarck-based Tom and Frances Leach Foundation, have also been provided for this project.
Details about all the events will probably be posted on the website
www.TheStudyND.org
in March, Gerhardt said.
The America 250 events, which are planned to take place at Bismarck State College, are 5-6 p.m. July 8, “Reading of the Declaration of Independence, with John Adams,” and 6-7:30 p.m. July 9, “Alexander Hamilton Speaks,” both performed by William Chrystal.
The Living History programs are planned for 7-8:15 p.m. Sept. 17, “Thomas Paine,” performed by Doug Mishler, and Oct. 6, 7-8:15 p.m, “Frederick Douglass,” performed by Nathan Richardson. Both will be moderated by Susan Frontczak.
The performers Chrystal and Richardson live in Virginia, Frontczak in Colorado,and Mishler in Nevada.
Another program, “Hemingway and Gellhorn,” is set for Sept. 16-18 at Bismarck State College, Gerhardt said. “It is part of our broader Chautauqua/living history programming connected to America 250 … (and) will feature performances and discussion centered on Ernest Hemingway and Martha Gellhorn, using their lives and writing as a way to explore major questions about American identity, war reporting, public memory, and the stories we tell about freedom, conflict and responsibility.
“What I am excited about with this event is that it gives us a way to approach America 250 beyond founding-era material. In other words, it helps us show the American story is not just about 1776, but also about the generations that followed and how Americans wrestled with democracy, power, truth and moral courage.”
This program “expands the initiative beyond commemoration into reflection, dialogue and interpretation, which is where the humanities are especially valuable,” she said. “It helps us reach audiences who may be drawn in through literature, journalism and performance, not only traditional history events.”
The Hemingway and Gellhorn program fits in with America 250 in that “it broadens the frame and adds depth to the larger effort.”
Gerhardt is hoping that these activities will give participants “a better understanding of all the debates and issues going on when our country was founded, and how those debates are continuing today,” she said, “and just to be more thoughtful and informed citizens.”
College students and members of the general public will also be invited to participate in a workshop aimed at teaching participants how to build a living history performance from primary sources and historical research.
Last year, The Study ND lost a substantial amount of funding – nearly $468,000, about half of its annual budget – from the National Endowment for the Humanities for its fiscal 2025 year.
The loss of that much funding was discouraging, Gerhardt said. “Very much so, because we had a lot of activities planned for America 250 and we had to cancel a lot of them, or – like in this case – seek other funding, which we were lucky to get.”
The Study ND currently has four full-time employees, she said. “We eliminated a part-time marketing position after the cuts.”
A nonprofit organization, The Study ND provides civics, arts and cultural education programming. The organization’s programs – which include online classes, book talks, lectures and more – reached about 24,000 people in 2024, Gerhardt told the North Dakota Monitor in April 2025.
During the summer, the organization hosts a civics education program for high school and middle school social studies teachers, she said.
On this day in 1943, two North Dakota army officers, Second Lieut. Arthur B. Kuntz and First Lieut. Bernard A. Anderson, were killed in separate medium bomber training crashes in Florida and Georgia.
Here is the complete story as it appeared in the paper that day:
Army Plane Crashes Kill Two N. D. Men
Two North Dakota officers in the army air forces were killed Sunday in bomber crashes during training flights, Associated Press dispatches revealed Monday.
Second Lieut. Arthur B. Kuntz of Harvey (Wells county) was killed with 10 others from the Avon Park, Fla., army bomber base when two medium bombers collided during a routine formation flight. Both planes crashed and there were no survivors.
First Lieut. Bernard A. Anderson of Warwick (Benson county) was one of six killed when a medium bomber from MacDill field, Tampa, Fla., crashed near Savannah, Ga. Lieutenant Anderson was co-pilot of the plane.
None of the other victims of either accident was from the Dakotas or Minnesota.
Lieutenant Kuntz, son of Mr. and Mrs. Roy Kuntz of Harvey, was graduated from the army air force navigation school at Hondo, Texas, as a second lieutenant last October, and received his wings as a navigator.
Kate Almquist is the social media manager for InForum. After working as an intern, she joined The Forum full time starting in January 2022. Readers can reach her at kalmquist@forumcomm.com.
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