Mary Carol Pederson

LITTLE ROCK — Mary Carol Pederson was a 32-year old stay-at-home mother of a toddler with another child on the way in 2003 when she decided to let a troubled teenager she didn’t know move in with her family.

Five years later, that decision inspired Pederson to found The CALL (Children of Arkansas Loved a Lifetime), a Christian-based organization that recruits other Christians to become foster or adoptive parents.

Pederson’s strong religious beliefs led her to become a foster parent. But the story began when her husband, KATV, Channel 7’s Seven on Your Side reporter Jason Pederson, met the teenager - known as J.B. - during a news assignment. Jason eventually became J.B.’s mentor, working with him on resolving his problems.

Pederson did not attend those sessions and had not met J.B. when she told her husband she wanted the couple to become his foster parents.

“I am not particularly a risk taker,” she says. “I like things predictable and yet every time I prayed about it, God just clearly confirmed for me that was what he wanted us to do.”

Pederson declines to go into specifics about J.B.’s problems, but does say he was dealing with “a series of difficult circumstances” and “it became clear his home could not provide the protection and supervision that he needed.”

Before she ever met the teenager, whom she now calls her “bonus son,” Pederson and her husband entered into the sometimes confusing and time-consuming process of becoming foster parents. But it was the number of children awaiting foster families that convinced her something needed to be done.

“We became certified as foster parents,” she says. “The thing that struck me was as soon as we became certified and open as a foster family, the phone calls started. And even though we were case-specific for one teenager, they called us all of the time. Every day or so I would get a call, ‘I’ve got a 3-year-old and a 1-year-old. Do you have room for them?’ A few days would go by, and it would be, ‘I’ve got a 6-year-old. Do you have room for her?’

“It struck me that there was this tremendous need in our community that we knew nothing about before. Here were children who just needed a safe place to stay and it was very eye-opening for me.”

The Pedersons had to wait months before their paperwork was approved to become foster parents to J.B.

“When I met J.B. for the first time, I noticed his big brown eyes and he just looked kind of lost,” she recalls. “He had heard from Jason that we wanted him to come live with us. I just remember he looked at me with tears in his eyes and he said, ‘Thank you.’”

A member of Fellowship Bible Church, Pederson met with the church’s leadership in 2006 to discuss how she could get more families involved in foster care and adoption. They suggested she put together a summit and invite leaders from the state Division of Children and Family Services at the Department of Human Services, as well as representatives of two dozen other churches.

That summit led to creation of The CALL.

“I didn’t know anything about the foster-care system” at the time, she says. “I had a myth that children that go into foster care are bad kids or troubled kids, and that’s not true. Children in foster care come into care because there is something wrong with their home environment. There is a safety issue. They have been abused or neglected. That’s the reason they come into foster care. It is through no fault of their own.”

The first person she called was friend Julie Munsell, who is director of communications at the Department of Human Services, to ask how she could get started.

“One of the things Mary Carol learned very quickly was she had to have patience,” Munsell says. “It was a new process. It was new to the state and new to the community. She just kept asking how she could help. Her patience gave us the flexibility and the time to orchestrate an agreement that met the federal guidelines and helped fulfill the purpose of finding families for these kids.”

Since then, The CALL has become an organization that “has had a tremendous impact on our ability to find and recruit families for foster care and adoption,” Munsell says.

TWO BIBLE QUOTES

When talking about the children in state care, Pederson mentions two quotes from the Bible:

“Religion that God our father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world” - James 1:27.

“A father to the fatherless, a defender of widows, is God in his holy dwelling” - Psalm 68:5.

“This young man was definitely fatherless and I began to connect the dots that he was like an orphan,” she says.

“I feel like every Christian needs to know about the plight of these local orphans. Children in foster care may not be orphans,” she says. “They may have parents, but if you look at the dictionary, orphans can mean children who are not under the protection of their parents and that’s why I have to make that link because the Bible is so clear on our responsibility to take care of orphans and the fatherless.”

From August 2007 through August 2009, The CALL recruited and helped approve 88 foster families in Pulaski and Lonoke counties. During that same time period, the state family services agency recruited and approved 147 foster families in those two counties.

To find foster families, The CALL spreads the wordthrough churches, working with about 80 congregations. Pederson concedes that there’s a need to involve more predominantly black churches. So far, only 20 black churches participate in The CALL. She would like to see the number of black foster families mirror the race of children awaiting foster care or adoption.

The benef it of going through The CALL - rather than working directly with the state - is a streamlined foster-training process and follow-up services.

All prospective foster families must complete 30 hours of training before being approved. Traditionally,families would participate in a 10-week training program. The CALL covers the same content during two weekends of concentrated training.

It also holds monthly organizational meetings in Pulaski and Lonoke counties to inform prospective foster families of the steps necessary to be approved, including completing all of the necessary paperwork and background checks.

After a family is approved and has taken in a foster child, The CALL has programs for ongoing support including group sessions with a child psychiatrist, resource materials and social events.

“The CALL is all about trying to make it as user-friendly as possible,” Pederson says.

Munsell agrees.

“One of the biggest benefits of The CALL is it provides mentoring to families,” Munsell says. “They help troubleshoot. They help families navigate the process that caseworkers just don’t have enough time to do. They fill a much-needed gap to help mentor these families as they navigate through the system.”

The organization is open to families of any religious denomination that “agrees with the Apostles’ Creed,” Pederson says. That creed is an ancient statement of faith accepted by most Protestant,Catholic and Orthodox Christians.

The CALL operates on a $130,000 annual budget and has four full-time employees. It is primarily funded through private donations.

“Mary Carol is the most focused person that I think I know,” says her husband, Jason. “She really probably takes on more than she can or should because she sees needs. She is a great mother, a great wife and a great executive. It is hard for any one person to be great at everything, but she does it.”

ROAD FROM EL DORADO

Pederson grew up in El Dorado, one of three children of Diane DeLone and Jim Spencer, who are now divorced. During her childhood, her parents were involved in charity organizations.

After graduating from William Woods College in Fulton, Mo., Pederson made a trip to her hometown before starting graduate school. During that trip to El Dorado, she met Jason. A young television reporter, he was covering a blood drive coordinated by Mary Carol’s mother.

The couple married after she obtained a master’s degree in business administration at the University of Missouri at Columbia. Not long after, they moved to Little Rock, where Jason had been hired as a KATV reporter.

After the move, Pederson tried her hand at a number of jobs but “none of them felt like my calling.” She ended up working in development at Family Life, a marriage ministry, which suited her desire to work in a religious, nonprofit atmosphere.

She left Family Life when she established The CALL.

The Pederson’s have two children, Spencer, 10, and Shelby, 8. J.B. is now an adult who recently married; he and his wife are adopting a baby. At J.B.’s wedding, Spencer was a junior groomsman and Shelby was flower girl.

Jason Pederson says many friends and family members thought they were “crazy” to want to foster a troubled teenager. But he says that he realized one has to recognize the “taps on the shoulder and the winks from God.” Today, he says, it is rewarding to see what J.B. has become - a happy husband with a good job.

The long-term goal of The CALL, Mary Carol says, is to set up offices in all Arkansas counties. The organization so far has offices in 20 counties. Adding more locations will require an increase in charitable contributions. But she is convinced she can do it.

“We are mandated in Scripture to do this and we shouldn’t have an option.We need to do something,” Pederson says of caring for foster children. “We are not all called to foster or adopt, but we can advocate for these children.

“We can help provide material things that they need. We can provide education for them. We can bake them a birthday cake. We can take them to a ball game. There’s all kinds of things we can do to serve, but I feel that as a Christian, it is a mandate.”SELF PORTRAIT Mary Carol Pederson

DATE AND PLACE OF BIRTH March 16, 1971, El Dorado.

THE BEST PARENTS I KNOW Love the Lord with all their hearts and love their spouse and their children with all of their hearts - but the Lord first.

IN HIGH SCHOOL, OTHER STUDENTS THOUGHT I WAS Quiet.

THE HARDEST THING ABOUT BEING MARRIED TO A TELEVISION REPORTER IS When there is a tornado, and it is all hands on deck, and he has to go where the storm is.

MY BIGGEST FEAR IS That The CALL ceases to exist or isn’t successful.

MY NICKNAME IS M.C.

WHEN I AM IN THE SHOWER, I SING Something by Mariah Carey.

MY MUST-WATCH TV SHOW ISAmerican Idol.

MOST PEOPLE DON’T KNOW I CAN Run a sound board.

MY HUSBAND AND I WENT ON OUR FIRST DATE TO Shoney’s.

I DRIVE A Ford Windstar.

THE NAME OF MY FIRST PET WAS Sophie, a cat.

ONE WORD TO SUM ME UP Grateful.