Peter Mutabazi grew up in Uganda with a difficult childhood. He could have let that define him. Instead, nearly a decade ago, he decided to become a foster parent—and since then, he's opened his home to 47 children and adopted three of them.
His reasoning is simple but unflinching: "Once you journey into foster care, it's hard to go home and say life is going to be okay knowing there are so many children that are looking for a safe and loving home." He doesn't see foster care as temporary charity. He sees it as a bridge—either back to biological families when that's possible, or to permanence with him.
"My job is to make sure children have a safe home, but also they can go back home, and if they cannot go back home, I want to be their final home," he explained to WXII. It's the kind of clarity that comes from understanding what it means to have nowhere to belong.
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Tony was 11 years old when his adoptive family abandoned him at a hospital. He had no safety net, no plan, no obvious future. Then he met Peter. What could have been another story of a child lost in the system became something different: a family.
Peter frames his work through the lens of his own heritage. "I am an African and I truly believe it takes a village to raise a child," he told WXII. "What you're doing, sharing our story, that is part of our village." In practice, this means he takes in children whenever he has space and the county approves it. He's not waiting for the perfect circumstances or the easiest cases. He's filling the gaps where they exist.
What makes this work isn't sentiment—it's consistency. Peter has spent nearly a decade proving that one person's willingness to say "yes" repeatedly, to keep showing up, to keep believing in children others have given up on, can reshape what's possible for them. Forty-seven children have experienced what it means to have a safe home. Three have experienced what it means to be chosen permanently. That's not inspiration porn. That's infrastructure for belonging.
