PEARL, Miss. (WLBT) – Children in foster care often travel with their belongings in a garbage bag. It’s a disturbing image that a former banker is trying to change.

Rob Scheer is doing that through an organization he founded called Comfort Cases. In Pearl on Tuesday, Scheer, along with Amerigroup Mississippi, hosted a “Packing Party” to support young people entering the foster care system – as well as survivors of human trafficking and domestic violence.

Scheer is a world-known author and public speaker and he said Comfort Cases is a labor of love, based on his on childhood experience as a foster child.

Scheer said, “So what inspired me to do this was the fact that I actually walked up my very first home in 1979 carrying a trash bag. And it tried to define who I was; the fact that I was disposable, invisible, and, for me, it never left my mind. And then after I’d actually graduated from high school and I decided to build my family. I built my family through adoption, adoption to foster care. And when my four children arrived carrying a trash bag, I knew that we had to do something and do something immediately.

During the party, community partners, along with Mayor Jake Windham and members of the Pearl police department, filled high quality duffle bags and backpacks with comfort and personal care items, such as blankets, pajamas, and books.

The duffle bags and backpacks will be donated to the Pearl Police Department, Mississippi Department of Child Protective Services, Methodist Children’s Home of Mississippi, and the Boys & Girls Clubs of Central Mississippi.

“I would love every single person to visit comfortcases.org and understand that no matter where you live, we all have an opportunity to be a part of the change. And that changes the statistics. We’re seeing kids in foster care, 430,000 children are in our system, and the saddest part, only 54% of them will actually graduate from high school. We can do better,” said Scheer.

Read the full article here.