Posts Tagged ‘international adoption’

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Open Letter from Dr. Jane Aronson to President Bill Clinton

Sunday, March 20th, 2011

 I saw Dr. Jane Aronson’s open letter to President Clinton on another blog, Whatever Things Are True. Dr. Aronson is founder and CEO of Worldwide Orphans Foundation, and writes with the authority of a physician involved in international adoption for some twenty years. Her message is so passionate I’m also printing it here, in the hopes of adding to the letter’s readership. Dr. Aronson’s subject is the recent news about adoption from Ethiopia, and her interpretation of its meaning.

March 13, 2011

An Open Letter to President Clinton 

Once again, tragedy strikes orphans  – children who might have been adopted into a permanent home have had their hopes and dreams demolished.  This time it’s  Ethiopia, where international adoption has been growing rapidly over the last six years, beginning with a handful of older children in the 1980’s and 90’s.  By last year 2,500 children – sweet babies and toddlers – were adopted by American families.

Now, the Ethiopian government has announced that it is reducing the number of visas approved for adoption from 50 per work day to five. The outcry from those waiting to become parents, from adoption agencies and from not for profit organizations advocating for children, is predictable and equally predictable, the world at large appears to be indifferent to the anguish this ruling is causing.  And so, the numbers of children adopted from Ethiopia will decrease, the time it takes to adopt will increase, and international adoption in general, and the children in particular, are the losers. (more…)

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Heritage Camp and Mamalita

Wednesday, March 16th, 2011

I cannot believe that it’s almost time for Heritage Camp. Something else I cannot believe is that I have been blogging at this site for more than a year! Yes, friends, the first Mamalita post appeared in February 2010, nine months before my book was published, and soon after my publicist at Seal Press, Eve Zimmerman, said “You need to build your platform. Have you thought about starting a blog?” To which I answered, “Honestly, no. I haven’t.” 

What I didn’t say, but I’m sure Eva understood, is that writing Mamalita had required my every molecule of writing energy and focus. Answering emails drained me enough, and thank goodness I hadn’t yet discovered Facebook. Could I add blogging to the mix? Add it to the mix I did, and found I really liked the practice. (My husband often calls me “the mad blogger.” ) My plan is to continue until I finalize my ideas for my next book and commit myself to a schedule for writing it. There are super-human people who can do both–focus on a manuscript and blog daily–but I don’t think I’m one of them.

Meanwhile, back to Heritage Camp. The great news is that for the fourth consecutive year, our family is attending Latin American Heritage Camp in Fraser, Colorado, and this year Mamalita: An Adoption Memoir is the book club selection. Yippee! If you’re going, please plan to join us on Friday night for a discussion. At some point during the weekend, I’ll also be leading an adult workshop on memoir-writing and the adoption experience. Stay tuned for details.

For those who are unfamiliar with Heritage Camp, I’m re-posting a section of my blog from last April so you can read all about it.

One of the very few places in the world where our family does not stand out as different is Colorado Heritage Camp. For the uninitiated, heritage camps are designed specifically for adoptive families of all kinds. The camp we attend is geared toward families with children from Latin America; camps are also designed for families with kids from Africa and the Caribbean, Cambodia, China, India and Nepal, the Philippines, Korea, Russia, and Vietnam.

Our family loves Heritage Camp. This will be the third year we attend. For a long weekend in June, we’ll stay in a YMCA lodge in the Rocky Mountains, along with other adoptive families from around the country. During the day, our kids will play games and do art projects that emphasize their Latin American culture. We adults will attend workshops and roundtables led by experts in adoption and child-rearing. Not all activities are scheduled: Families also find time to swim, hike, shop at the mercado, and practice their samba dancing at the Saturday night fiesta.

Every year, camp opens with an opening ceremony where the kids parade into the meeting hall carrying flags from the countries where they were born. As Olivia waited her turn the first year, she said to me with awe in her voice, ”Everyone here looks like us.” I was too choked up by the sight of our beautiful children carrying their flags to respond, but I squeezed my daughter’s hand to let her know I agreed. Olivia and Mateo hope to attend Heritage Camp every year until they turn 17. After that, their plan is to become counselors so they can be the “big kids” they now look up to.

For more info, check out this link.

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Adoption from Honduras

Wednesday, March 9th, 2011

The Fort Worth, Texas-based Gladney Center for Adoption is one of four U.S. agencies recently approved to process adoptions through Honduras, the Forth Worth Star-Telegram reported yesterday, in an article by Anna M. Tinsley titled Gladney Center OK’d for Adoption. This could be good news for potential adoptive families who feel an affinity and connection to the culture and heritage of Central America. In 2010, Honduras finalized nine cases for international adoption. In the article, Tinsley writes:

“We haven’t advertised this yet because we don’t have 100 percent of our ducks in order,” said Marshall Williams, Gladney’s vice president of international adoptions and family services. “But we have had a remarkable number of people contacting us, indicating their interest in adopting from Honduras.”

Williams is in Honduras this week to hire an attorney and facilitator, the last two employees needed to get the effort under way.

Gladney initially applied to handle adoptions there about two years ago. After a change in government, the Honduran agency that oversees international adoptions recently approved Gladney and three other U.S. agencies to facilitate adoptions of Honduran children.

“There are many thousands of orphans in Honduras that would benefit from intercountry adoption,” said Chuck Johnson, CEO of the National Council for Adoption. “In 2010, there were only nine intercountry adoptions.”

“There is definitely interest in adopting from Latin America. My hope is that the Honduran government can provide oversight to the intercountry adoption process and work with quality U.S. adoption service providers.”

Last month, a Honduran delegation visited the Gladney Center, meeting local staffers and observing how the adoption process is handled in the United States, officials said.

In 2009, there were four children adopted from Honduras, compared with 11 in 2008, 22 in 2007, three in 2006 and 10 in 2005, federal records show.

So far, Gladney officials are compiling a list of people who want to adopt from Honduras.

“There are fewer families in line, so it might go faster in the beginning,” Williams said.

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Adoptions from Ethiopia to be cut 90%

Monday, March 7th, 2011

On Friday, Voice of America reported “Ethiopia to Cut Foreign Adoptions by Up to 90 Percent.” The U.S. State Department promises to issue an Alert about the subject, but so far, none has been posted.

At the risk of sounding like a broken record, I’ll just ask again “Why is it so difficult to regulate international adoption?” The article states:

Ministry spokesman Abiy Ephrem says the action was taken in response to indications of widespread fraud in the adoption process… Investigations have turned up evidence of unscrupulous operators in some cases tricking Ethiopian parents to give up their children, then falsifying documents in order to claim a part of the large fees involved in inter country adoptions.

The situation was the same in Guatemala. Everyone from Embassy officials to adoptive parents meeting their childen in hotel lobbies knew the identities of the “unscrupulous operators.” Why weren’t these unscrupulous operators arrested and stopped? Instead, the entire system was shut down.

And what exactly does “falsifying” documents mean? Does it mean changing an address to protect a birth mother’s identity? Or even changing her name? In my opinion, those kinds of falsifications are very different from falsifying the answer to the one question–the only question–that matters: “Did this birth mother freely relinquish her child for adoption?” 

For families in process, the next few months could be uncertain and unpredictable. I send you my prayers.

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After the visit

Saturday, March 5th, 2011

What I want to talk about is what it feels like for me after I visit birth family in Guatemala.  Not what it feels like for anyone else, because I’m not qualified to speak to that, but what it feels like for me.

And I don’t mean to imply that making contact with Olivia’s birth family is not the greatest thing I have done in my life. Because, really, it is. If I do nothing else in my life, I’ve done that. For my daughter, for her birth mother, for the rest of her biological family. And it feels huge.

But there is a sadness attached to it. The sadness of life’s realities. That circumstances are hard, that life is not fair. That situations are unstable. That some have so much while others have so little. Relationships end. People get sick. Wars happen, and people are killed. Illnesses wipe out entire families. Nine children are born, but only three survive.

When we go to Guatemala, when we insert ourselves into families’ lives, we change their perception of the world. We represent “elsewhere.” Another possibility. Someplace they’ve heard about, maybe from the man in another family who left and never came back. Who sent money for a while, then stopped sending it. Or the mother who sends it, but is still gone.

This is neither a good thing, nor a bad thing. Either way, it’s not simple. There is love, there is loss. There is longing. We each have something the other doesn’t.

We have changed the lives of Olivia’s birth family, as they have changed ours. I’m grateful and humbled.

Every visit brings back the emotions I felt the first time I held Olivia. Simply being in Guatemala triggers many memories of her adoption–good and bad. It takes a while to process the experience. Today, I give myself permission to be quiet and just feel.

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Guatemala Part 7: Spanish School redux

Monday, February 28th, 2011

Several people have asked if I recommend studying Spanish in Guatemala. Absolutely, yes. Language schools exist throughout the country, but we only have studied in Antigua. Last August, we spent a month in Guatemala and I posted a blog about our experience at one school, San Jose El Viejo. I’m reposting the blog here. 

This summer at Latin American Heritage Camp, a panel of teen and adult adoptees dedicated a large percentage of their discussion to the importance of learning, speaking, and/or retaining the language of one’s birth country. The consensus was that language is critical if one wishes to interface with birth family, foster family, orphanage family, or, indeed, the culture at large, in a meaningful way. That’s true in my own life, as well: Speaking even elementary Spanish has allowed me to communicate with many more people in Guatemala than I would be able to otherwise.

Not that teaching a child a second language is easy. For my husband and me, it has been anything but that. Neither of us is fluent in Spanish, which is our biggest obstacle. And not only do we not employ a nanny who speaks Spanish, we rarely, if ever, hire a babysitter. Our local public school is not bilingual, and though we have a few Spanish-speaking friends, their children prefer to speak English while playing with our kids. This year, in third grade, Olivia will study Spanish. We’re lucky that it’s the second language taught in California schools. What about the kids adopted from Nepal or Russia or Ethiopia? How do they learn to communicate with others from their homeland?

The good news is that during this past trip to Guatemala, Olivia saw and understood the benefits of speaking Spanish. While listening to one conversation I carried on with someone, she said with admiration, “Mom, you speak a lot of Spanish!” Reader, believe me, I don’t. But you get the idea: In a real-life example, my daughter realized the efficacy of learning a second language. You can talk to people who don’t speak English!

Guatemala is renowned for its language schools. Here is link to a list of some of them. For the last weeks we were there, I managed to convince Olivia to attend morning classes while I posted my blog. She agreed that learning new vocabulary while drawing pictures and making figures with clay was a lot more fun than watching me wrestle with my USB flash drive at Conexion. The photo above is of her with her maestra.

For anyone who is considering Spanish school, I say “go.” Olivia attended San Jose El Viejo–because it was closest to our apartment and because the children of a woman I met through an adoption listserve were attending—and loved it. But I don’t think you can go wrong with any of them.

I’m not deluding myself into believing that Olivia speaks Spanish, or will retain any of the information that she learned. Now that she’s visited Guatemala, though, and attended school, she sees that speaking Spanish is an attainable goal, and one that multiplies her opportunities to communicate. That one outcome, to me,  makes the entire trip worthwhile.

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Guatemala Part 5: Niños con Bendicíon

Friday, February 25th, 2011

On Wednesday after Spanish school, Patrice, Olivia, and I attended a folk dance performance by Niños con Bendicíon in nearby San Antonio Aguas Calientes. The dance troupe was founded and is led by Lesbi Chavez.

The children, ages 6 to 13 years old, dress in traditional outfits or traje from various parts of Guatemala. Each of the four dances they performed on Wednesday told a story from their Maya K’iche culture: Blessing of the Corn, Planting, The Corn God, and Dance of the K’iche King. The children accompanied themselves on traditional instruments, including marimba, drum, and flute.

Afterward, Lesbi demonstrated how to make tortillas, and we all got to try. As an absolute novice, I can tell you, it’s harder than it looks. Lesbi was very pleased to notice that Olivia, whose roots are Maya K’iche, was a natural at getting just the right ratio of water to pulverized corn paste. Above is a photo of our finished products, cooking on a traditional stove. Three guesses which tortillas were ours and which made by Lesbi.

The funds generated by the dance performances pay the school and living expenses of the children who participate in Niños con Bendicíon. For presentations, sponsorship, or more information, you may contact Lesbi Chavez (in Spanish) at Childrenwithblessing@gmail.com or Nancy Hoffman (in English) of Guatemala Reservations at Nancy@GuatemalaReservations.com. Learn more at http://www.supportlosninos.net/

Olivia, Patrice, and I, and the other members of our group, really enjoyed the afternoon we spent with Lesbi and the dancers. The next time you’re in Antigua, consider adding this outing to your itinerary.

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Korea Herald on international adoption

Wednesday, February 16th, 2011

Article about adoption in the Korea Herald, dated February 13, 2011:

Despite a falling birth rate here, many Korean children are still finding their home abroad, a report found Sunday.

Of the total 2,439 children adopted in 2009, 1,125 were sent abroad, slightly down from 1,250 in 2008, the Korea Institute for Health and Social Affairs said.

Adoptions have declined here along with the country’s falling birth rate.

Over the past 10 years, the number of domestic adoptions has decreased from 1,726 in 1999 to 1,314 in 2009, while that of international adoptions has almost halved from 2,409 in 1999.

However, the ratio of international adoption still remains high despite the government’s efforts to encourage domestic adoption.

*** 

As reasons for hesitating to adopt a child, according to the institute, 32.1 percent of Koreans surveyed said that they are not sure whether they can love and raise the adopted child like their biological one, while 29.5 percent cited the nation’s family system based on blood ties.

Parents also pointed out financial difficulties (11.9 percent) and social prejudice toward adopted people (11.4 percent), the institute said.

Due to the still prevalent belief that a son carries on a family line, girls younger than three were most favored for adoption, while boys, older children and those with disabilities were less preferred.

Most parents who have adopted a child also said that a child’s health, gender and age were their priority to consider.

I find it interesting that nearly a third of Koreans polled said they are “not sure whether they can love and raise the adopted child like their biological one.” If a similar study were conducted in the United States, I wonder what that number would be.

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Valentines to Guatemala

Thursday, February 10th, 2011

Having worked in PR in my former life, I was happy to see a press release about the Guatemala900 posted on PRWeb,  a site that provides story ideas and information to news media outlets. The title tells it all: Valentines to Guatemala: Heavy-hearted US Adoptive Families Reach out to the Guatemalan Children they Desperately Love and Wait For.

February 14, 2011 will mark the fourth Valentine’s Day, at a minimum, for hundreds of US families awaiting the homecoming of their adoptive children from Guatemala. The Guatemala900, a family initiated campaign dedicated to bringing home the hundreds of children caught in a political nightmare, is hosting a heart-wrenching collection of expressions of love this month. In the spirit of Valentines Day, the entire month of February will be devoted to showcasing love letters written by the adoptive families to their waiting children. A daily valentine will be posted from a waiting family: http://www.guatemala900.org

***

All those associated with Guatemala900 believe in the sanctity of family and promote fair and ethical adoption practices. Families are committed to the children of Guatemala; they are proud of their heritage and embrace the beauty of their country of origin. Families entered into these adoptions in good faith with the expectation that their rights to a fair adoption process and their adoptive children’s rights to a family would be protected and honored by the U.S. and Guatemalan Governments.

On the day that celebrates love, I hope this story receives the media coverage it deserves.

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Another reason to love Hugh Jackman

Tuesday, February 8th, 2011

… is that he’s married to Deborra-Lee Furness, the woman the Australian Melbourne Weekly describes as “film actress and fierce adoption campaigner.”  Deborra-Lee Furness and Hugh Jackman are adoptive parents to two children born in the United States–Oscar, age 10; and Ava, age 5. In November 2010, Furness organized a summit in New York, Forgotten Children: International Adoption and the Orphan Crisis, featuring leaders in the field such as Dr. Jane Aronson, Ethiopian pediatrician Dr. Sophie Mengistu, and filmmaker Deann Borshay Liem (In the Matter of Cha Jung Hee).

In this profile, titled Deborra-Lee Furness: Leading the Charge, the Melbourne Weekly writes:

Actress Deborra-Lee Furness is leading the charge to change Australia’s ‘‘anti-adoption culture.’’ … She’s only been in Melbourne for a few days and an Australian Institute of Health and Welfare report into local adoption rates was released this morning… While the disturbing statistics such as a 21-fold decrease in adoptions in Australia since the early 1970s are nothing new for the long-time campaigner, Furness is still furious about the personal stories of excruciating red tape and bureaucratic decisions.

***

After miscarriages and failed IVF attempts, Furness and Jackman adopted two children in the U.S. Furness says the kids are just sensational. “They are well travelled. Oscar is very artistic and Ava wants to be a rock star – so at least they are in the arts, which is good!”

***

While Furness is happy to speak candidly albeit briefly about her own brood, it’s the issue of other adopted children that really fires her up. Having founded Adoption Awareness Week in Australia in 2008, Furness recently hosted an adoption summit in New York where she pulled together the “rock stars of the field.” Together with editor of the Daily Beast news website Tina Brown, Furness invited representatives from UNICEF, Harvard, Worldwide Orphans Foundation and politicians to talk about the orphan crisis.

Furness insists that she is not pro-adoption (“I wish every child could stay with their family, but that’s not the world that we live in”), but she gets extremely frustrated with Australia’s “anti-adoption culture” which makes inter-country adoption near impossible. Of the 40,000 inter-country adoptions worldwide in 2009, only 270 were Australian. A four- to seven-year wait is the minimum for most local couples, with many having to wait up to 10 years. Most invest a huge amount of money and emotion and for some, the process takes so long that they miss out completely.

“This is a huge, huge crisis and these kids aren’t part of it,” Furness says. “They aren’t voters, there is no agenda for the politicians but I do think you judge a country by the way they treat their children and it is embarrassing. I am out there on the international stage and we are the lowest in the world as far as inter-country adoption…  I have been talking to the attorney-general and trying to speed it up, but it needs leadership – people who understand the situation and how complex it is.”

Finally, the article concludes:

Like all working mums, Furness admits it is difficult to juggle her campaigning, acting career and family, but says it’s the injustice of the adoption situation that keeps her going.

Long may she wave.

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