(The Lion) — First lady Melania Trump unveiled an initiative last week to extend to foster kids the president’s signature savings accounts for children.

One child welfare advocate told The Lion it is an “incredible” opportunity for a population frequently forgotten by the system.

Part of the first lady’s “Fostering the Future” platform, the initiative allows foundations, churches, communities and private donors to make donations to the savings accounts.

Darcy Olsen, founder and CEO of The Center for the Rights of Abused Children, a nonprofit fighting for the constitutional rights of abandoned and abused children through pro bono courtroom advocacy and policy reform, explained the significance of the initiative to The Lion.

“Children who have been abused and abandoned and put into foster care have been invisible on the national and political stage forever. Their problems have been the same for the past 50 years,” Olsen said. “What we’re doing there is we are inviting civil society to help these children. We’re not expecting just the state to do it.”

The “Trump Accounts” were created as part of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, under the Working Families Tax Cuts section. Children under 18 who are U.S. citizens with a Social Security number are eligible for an account, and children born between Jan. 1, 2025, and Dec. 31, 2028, are eligible for $1,000 in federal seed funding under the program.

Olsen told The Lion these “Trump Accounts” typically had to be opened by a parent. Since most foster children do not have a parent available to open an account on their behalf, this meant they were effectively excluded from the program, until now.

Announced by the first lady and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent on June 11, “Fostering the Future Accounts” allow for a child welfare agency of a state, territorial or tribal government that is the legal guardian of an eligible child to open a “Trump Account” for that child. Once children turn 18, they gain access to their account.

The “Fostering the Future Accounts” provide a rare opportunity for communities to aid foster children, as “a local foundation could literally seed every foster child’s account in its county tomorrow,” Olsen said.

Olsen noted dozens of private entities have announced contributions to “Trump Accounts.” The Americans for Tax Reform tallied 82 companies, foundations, individuals and states that have announced contributions to the accounts as of June 11.

Twenty-three governors have pledged to set up these accounts for children within their state’s care, according to the White House.

Olsen previously led the Goldwater Institute, a conservative think tank, before directing education and child policy at the Cato Institute. When she fostered and adopted children, Olsen saw inside the courtroom and quickly realized “that children in foster care have basically been stripped of all their constitutional rights, and that’s one of the reasons that they have such poor outcomes.”

Youth who age out of foster care are more likely to experience unemployment and homelessness than the general population, and they are less likely to earn an associate or bachelor’s degree by their mid-to-late-20s, according to the child welfare advocacy nonprofit Penny Lane Centers.

“When they age out of the system, they can’t buy a used car, they don’t have a phone, they don’t have a laptop, they don’t have a suit for an interview [and] they don’t have shoes,” Olsen said. “Not everybody is going to be able to foster or adopt a child, but many people could contribute to their accounts.”