On September 18th, 2025, a Central Florida family spent the day at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center on a private tour donated by Galactic Medallion. The visit was the fulfillment of a prize they had won months earlier at the inaugural Cheers to Kindness fundraiser, hosted by Fostering Kindness.
The gala, held May 8th, felt like neighbors gathering indoors—food, drinks, and local businesses rallying together to meet needs that few can meet alone. Contributions large and small added up to something greater. That evening, generosity was less about charity and more about shared responsibility. The winning bid secured a day at Kennedy, but the meaning of that prize stretched far beyond one tour.
A Family’s Return to the Cape
The family—husband, wife, and their two college-aged sons—had not visited the Space Center in decades. Elizabeth A. Schneider, Board Vice President of Fostering Kindness and CEO of Galactic Medallion, arranged the itinerary herself. Her aim was simple: “I just wanted it to be an easy day.”
The morning began at the Courtyard by Marriott near Cape Canaveral, where they met their concierge. From there, they crossed the Indian River causeway and entered NASA’s gates.
Their tour moved through exhibits that preserve the Apollo era and into galleries where Artemis missions are taking shape. They stood beneath towering rockets, walked through hangars of history, and glimpsed the future being built in real time. For the family, the experience was both a return and a rediscovery—a chance to see the Space Coast as a living story still unfolding.
Kindness in Everyday Gestures
Founded in 2021 in Altamonte Springs, Fostering Kindness was created to provide comfort and joy to children in foster care. Its Comfort Bags—a nightlight, blanket, toiletries, and a stuffed animal—ease the shock of being placed in a new home.
Birthdays, too, are often overlooked within the foster system. The organization responds with personal gifts—sketch pads, basketballs, music—chosen less for their cost than for the recognition they carry. Schneider describes these efforts as “rays of hope and joy,” restoring dignity and belonging for young people navigating a system that can feel impersonal.
Life After the System
At eighteen, foster youth “age out” of care. The phrase is bureaucratic, but the change is stark: overnight, protections vanish, and young people must face questions of housing, work, and stability on their own. Some find themselves at the edge of homelessness just as adulthood begins.
In Florida, one path forward exists: public colleges and universities waive tuition and fees for those who grew up in foster care, extending through age twenty-eight. The barrier of tuition falls away, though the costs of housing and books remain. Still, the chance to pursue education without debt becomes a lifeline.
My Special Place in Space
To mark that passage into adulthood, Galactic Medallion created My Special Place in Space, a program that brings eighteen-year-olds in foster care to Kennedy Space Center for a day of discovery.
Walking among rockets and engineers, participants see not only what has been built but what is being prepared for the future. The experience is less spectacle than perspective: a chance to imagine how their own lives might connect with exploration, innovation, and purpose.
The program’s motto is “inspiring the next generation of space explorers,” but its deeper gift is showing that work can be more than labor—it can become a calling.
Bridging Worlds: Kindness Meets Cosmos
The September 18th tour was more than a family outing. It was the realization of a community’s generosity, carried from a spring gala into the corridors of spaceflight.
“Together with Fostering Kindness, Galactic Medallion, and My Special Place in Space, we remain committed to creating experiences that uplift and inspire,” Schneider reflected afterward.
The family’s day at the Cape was a prize, but it was also a reminder. Changing lives doesn’t always demand a grand gesture. Sometimes it is one act—planned with care, freely given—that widens the horizon for foster youth and affirms that the future remains unwritten, waiting for each young person to shape their own path.
