Mama G's Home for Teens
Since 2015
"The first time one of my teens in foster care turned eighteen and was immediately homeless, I was horrified. I couldn't do nothing."
In 2015, Ginger became an advocate for teens in foster care. Teens "age out" of the system at eighteen — some qualify for extended foster care, many don't, often because of mental health struggles, gaps in education, or the simple inability to hold a job yet. When one of her teens aged out and landed on the street despite every effort to get him into extended care, she and her husband John Sheid — an ordained pastor known to the kids as "Papa J" — decided to build something themselves.
Mama G's Home for Teens, now a 501(c)(3), is fiercely protective of the young people in its care — both those still in foster care and those who've aged out with nowhere to go. Removed from their families through no fault of their own, often abused or neglected, many arrive angry, hurt, and traumatized. The organization becomes an extended family: mentoring, life skills, financial and familial support, clothing, housing, and household basics — the full weight of what parents provide, for kids who no longer have any.
Some youth live with the family directly. Others are placed in independent housing, connected to community support, and given the ongoing guidance of parents they no longer have — kept from becoming homeless and hopeless, so they know, in Ginger's words, that they matter and that someone cares.
Guardian ad Litem since 2016 — still advocating for kids in the child welfare system, one case at a time.