AUSTIN, Texas — Joshua has been in and out of the Texas foster care system since he was four years old. Now 12, he currently lives in a group home with other children as he waits for a forever family to adopt him.
When chatting with Joshua, it's easy to tell he carries himself as someone much older than he is. That's understandable, given that he's been through a lot in his childhood. It's also easy to tell he's very bright and a strong communicator.
KVUE's Hannah Rucker met up with Joshua at the statewide nonprofit Keep Texas Beautiful. At his young age, Joshua is already very passionate about the environment and says he wants to save the world.
"My science teacher keeps explaining to me what's going on, and I just want to do my part the best I can," Joshua said.
Joshua is also a talented artist, spending hours each day carefully drawing different anime characters while finding inspiration from different shows that he watches. He works hard to evoke different emotions in the faces of the people he draws. He also said one character in particular has a similar back story to his own.
"When I was younger, I used to be abused. And I really didn't know a lot that happened, and I really didn't cope with it. So I kept it inside like something that he [the character] did. He kept it inside, and he really didn't show his emotions until he got more sanseis and stuff like that and they helped him out his whole life," Joshua said.
Joshua is also teaching himself the guitar and dreams of becoming an architect someday.
He is very excited at the thought of finding a forever family to love and care for him. He dreams of living on a beach someday and drawing pictures of sunsets.
To learn more about Joshua or to put in an inquiry to adopt him, visit his page on the Heart Gallery of Central Texas.
KVUE launched the Forever Families segment with Partnerships for Children (PFC) in June 2020 to highlight children in the Heart Gallery of Central Texas who need secure and permanent families. Every day, there are nearly 1,000 children waiting to get adopted in Central Texas, according to PFC.
Editor's note: The children who are in the Heart Gallery program and featured in KVUE's Forever Families segments are children who have had every effort made on their behalf to connect them with family or others in their community to provide options for permanent, adoptive homes. Through no fault of their own, that hasn’t happened yet, and so in partnership with the Department of Family and Protective Services, we collaborate to bring awareness to KVUE viewers about these children in the hopes of finding them permanency before they age out.