Kids helping kids

Exposito helped other kids. Kids gripped in hardships he knows all about.

"I used to be in the same situation," Exposito said. "It's tough, I know."

Exposito lives in a Bloomington group home for troubled teens now, but growing up he bounced between foster homes after his mother died.

Early Wednesday morning, Exposito and more than a dozen other teens volunteered to distribute 1,700 bags of blankets, toys, toiletries and other supplies to children in foster care throughout the county.

The annual event brings together more than a dozen partners to distribute sacks of personal supplies for foster children throughout the county. The My Stuff Bags Foundation donates sacks stocked with various combinations of personals for boys and girls.

Stater Bros. lent a truck to pick up the merchandise in San Diego and haul it to the Children's Fund Warehouse on Arrowhead Avenue, said spokeswoman Heather Lint.

At the warehouse, the teens, who volunteer through the county's Kinship Families program and nonprofit Young Visionaries Youth Leadership Academy, helped load the bags onto trucks and minivans for distribution.

A dozen county and private agencies, including the Operation Phoenix foundation, Department of Children's Services and the Transitional Age Youth program, took the bags Wednesday and today to distribute to foster children their programs serve, Lent said.

Amidst the smiles that surrounded the distribution of goodies, program leaders acknowledged the state budget crunch weighed heavy on their future.

The Children's Fund is maintained through private donations and administered by county staff, but looming state cuts to health and human services have the county braced for tightening belts.

"For this year we're looking good," said Assistant County Administrator Linda Haugan. "But beyond that, all my programs are jeopardized in one way or another (by the budget crisis)."

But for the volunteers, Sacramento was no concern.

Clarence Green, 14, lost his mom to a drug overdose when he was 3. Now he lives in Acts for Children group home and wants to be a social worker when he grows up.

"Being little and picked on and feeling alone," Green said, struggling to enunciate through his bulky dental braces. "I know all about how that feels."