This mom is giving kids in her community clothes, education, and a link to their Native American culture

Becoming a foster mom gave Elisia Manuel the family she always wanted. After experiencing serious gaps in resources, she started a nonprofit that is helping hundreds of other families like hers.

Often, the calls from case workers come with great urgency. A baby, a toddler – a child who is in desperate need of a safe home. For Elisia Manuel, one of those urgent calls came in 2012. There was an infant in need of immediate care. “A case manager said, ‘You have 48 hours, and we need this car seat back,’” Manuel said. “That’s where I knew we needed to make a change. We needed to figure out resources.” It was Manuel’s own experience as a foster parent and adoptive mother that led her to start her nonprofit, Three Precious Miracles, a volunteer-run organization that supports vulnerable Native American youth and their families. Manuel, who says she is Apache and Mexican, and her husband, Tecumseh, an enrolled member of Gila River Indian Community, became licensed foster parents in 2012 with his tribe in Arizona. Across the state, Native American children are overrepresented in the foster care system, while there is a shortage of Native American foster parents. “Within six months I became a mom to four children that were all under the age of 2 years old,” Manuel said. “I tell people, ‘I was abundantly blessed.’”