Jennifer Jin Brower was born in South Korea, but until a few years ago, she had never used chopsticks or heard of kimchee.

Because she looks Asian, strangers ask, "Where are you from? Do you speak English?" But English is her mother tongue - her adoptive mother's tongue.

Ms. Brower, 29, was raised by a Caucasian family in Grand Rapids, Mich. As a child, she says, "I didn't think that I was Asian." But that didn't stop other children from mocking her features.

Ms. Brower, who now lives in Seattle, says she didn't feel confident in her identity until she spent two months in South Korea last year. "I finally felt proud to be Asian and Korean because I finally knew what that meant," she explains.

The generation of children adopted from Asia in the seventies and eighties - mostly from South Korea - has come of age. As adults, thousands are returning to their countries of origin to search for their birth parents, learn the language and reclaim the heritage they lost as infants.

Monday, July 30, 2007

It's a small, small world...

I was reading through my daily digest of the yahoo group EthiopiaAdopt (which I highly recommend) and someone posted a question inquiring about Enat Alem Orphanage. Well my kiddos are at Enat Alem Orphanage, so I also inquired. Shellye in Israel responded and told me that she adopted her little girl from this orphanage and although they don't have many resources and the child to caretaker ratio is high, they seem to love and take good care of the children. She said she was there in April and I could look at the pictures on her blog. Well I know my kids arrived at the orphanage on April 5th because that is the birth date they gave Bennett. I looked through the pictures and low and behold there is an accidental picture of Bennett !!!

Posted by Lisa at 6:55 AM

Millions of homes are needed for India's abandoned children. The government wants to make it easier for foreigners to adopt. But huge obstacles remain - not least British red tape. Viv Groskop talks to parents whose determination has won through

Viv Groskop

@vivgroskop

Published onThu 26 Jul 2007 00.02 BST

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Draft Guidelines For Adopting Children Leave Nuns And NGOs Unhappy

Published Date: July 23, 2007

Certain guidelines that a federal agency has proposed to regulate the adoption of children are unhelpful, say Catholic nuns and NGOs.

On July 11, the Central Adoption Resource Agency (CARA), an autonomous body under the federal ministry of women and child development, announced the guidelines, purportedly to ensure transparency in adoption dealings.

CARA chairperson J.K. Mittal told UCA News on July 16 the guidelines aim to plug “loopholes” in the adoption process, check child trafficking and reduce processing time. According to Yespal Debas, CARA´s secretary, the guidelines will help simplify adoption procedures in India. “Earlier, there were a lot of dilemmas and misconceptions on adoption of children,” Debas told UCA News.

Bankrupt Cambridge adpotion agency had ties to suspect African orphanage

By Brian Caldwell

News
Jul 17, 2009

Tell a friend CAMBRIDGE -- An orphanage in Ghana run by an Ontario charity has been shut down over concerns that children were taken from their parents for international adoption.
"Some of the parents were not aware, some of the children were actually not orphans and so on," said Stephen Adongo, acting director of social work in the African country.

"We found out that some of the parents didn't understand why their children were taken away, why the children should be in school. They were not told the facts, so we viewed that seriously."

Located near Accra, Ghana, the orphanage is run by Hands of Mercy Christian Outreach International, a non-profit group based in Fort Erie.

Problems there came to light after the collapse this week of Cambridge-based Kids Link International Adoption Agency, which operated under the name Imagine Adoption.

Imagine was working with the Ghana orphanage to arrange adoptions by Canadian families who had invested $20,000 or more to get children.

Up to 450 families across the country were stunned when Imagine filed for bankruptcy amid concerns senior staff members, including executive director Susan Hayhow, had unusually high expense claims.

At various stages of the lengthy, costly international adoption process -- mostly involving children from Ethiopia -- the families are now in limbo while bankruptcy trustees and government officials try to sort out the situation.

About 30 families had reached the point where they were matched with a child while waiting for adoptions to be legally completed.

Nine of those children were at the Ghana orphanage, one of four run by the husband-and-wife team behind Hands of Mercy.

Those adoptions have been on hold since allegations about the orphanage surfaced three months ago.

Adongo said Ghana was already reviewing orphanages in the country when he was alerted by the Canadian High Commission to concerns about possible child trafficking at the Hands of Mercy facility.

An investigation by Ghana officials didn't turn up evidence of children at the home being bought and sold for a profit or exploitation.

Adongo said they determined, however, that at least three children slated for overseas adoptions had been taken away from their parents.

"The orphanage sent people around to bring (children) to the place," he said in an interview yesterday.

Adongo said all adoptions through the orphanage were suspended and it was recently ordered to shut down by the Ghana government. No improper adoptions went ahead.

"We intervened at that time so they couldn't continue," he said.

Karen Shadd, a spokesperson for Citizenship and Immigration Canada, said the Canadian government also suspended adoptions from the orphanage after trafficking suspicions were raised.

"It's not something that we see a lot of," she said.

Deborah MacQuarrie, an evangelical Christian minister who runs Hands of Mercy with her husband, Max, from their Fort Erie home, denied doing anything wrong. She said the couple has been working since 1999 to help needy children abroad as a religious mission.

"We're a ministry," MacQuarrie said. "We serve God. We teach the children about God. We take kids who are dying and we bring them in and we love them and we give them everything we can give them."

She blamed improper placements at the Ghana orphanage on a local staff member who got fired for bringing in members of his extended family.

MacQuarrie also denied the home has been shut down, with about 100 children still living there, and said the investigation by Ghana officials cleared it of serious wrongdoing.

She said the group worked with an American agency to arrange about six adoptions -- with eight others underway -- and didn't have any problems.

"God has put it in our hearts to help these children," MacQuarrie said. "If you go onto our (website), you'll see the kids are all happy, healthy and everything is wonderful."

Adongo said the Ghana investigation didn't directly involve Imagine Adoption, which began working with the orphanage last year.

Bankruptcy trustees are still sorting through Imagine's finances and working with governments officials to see if proper adoptions that had reached the match stage can be completed.

Volunteer directors of the non-profit group grew worried about a month ago after noting questionable expenses, including leased luxury vehicles.

Verslag bezoek aan Haiti van 9 tot 12 Juli

Maison l`Esperance

Zoals u weet is Maison l´Esperance onlangs verhuisd. Het nieuwe tehuis ligt in een rustige buitenwijk naast een ziekenhuis. Het huis is ruim en ligt op een groot terrein met veel bomen, het is een aflopend terrein, beneden stroomt een riviertje. Mevr. Cecile Gabathuler woont in een huis dat direct naast het kindertehuis ligt, hierin is ook het kantoor gevestigd. Verder is er een apart gastenverblijf gebouwd, met 2 ruime kamers met elk een eigen badkamer. In het huis van Cecile is nog een gastenverblijf. Deze kamers voor de gasten zijn nog niet klaar voor gebruik. Er moet nog van alles afgebouwd en ingericht worden. Mevrouw Cecile Gabathuler wil de mogelijkheid bieden aan de adoptief ouder(s) om hier te logeren als zij hun kind ophalen. Ook kunnen geadopteerde kinderen, die terugkomen om het land te leren kennen of om hun biologische familie te ontmoeten hier verblijven en eventueel meehelpen in het tehuis. Het kindertehuis bestaat uit 3 verdiepingen, iedere verdieping heeft een aantal slaapzalen en ruime badkamers. De arts en verpleegsters hebben een eigen spreekkamer. Beneden is de keuken, de voorraadkamer en de kamers voor opslag van bijvoorbeeld schoolmateriaal en kleertjes. Op het grote balkon wordt de was gedaan en hangen of liggen de kleertjes te drogen. Op dit moment is de water- en elektriciteitsvoorziening onvoldoende. Er moet water worden ingekocht, een waterauto vult de watertanks bij. Voor de elektriciteit is een generator nodig, het gewone lichtnet functioneert regelmatig niet, de generator heeft onvoldoende capaciteit voor dit grote huis.

De kinderen

Er zijn op dit moment ruim 130 kinderen opgenomen in het tehuis. De conditie waarin de kinderen worden opgenomen is slecht. Ondervoeding en verwaarlozing is voor de maatschappelijk werkster de belangrijkste reden om een kind op te nemen. Maison l´Esperance biedt de kinderen letterlijk een overlevingskans. Als de moeder in zeer slechte conditie is kan ook zij tijdelijk in huis worden opgenomen, waar zij de mogelijkheid krijgt aan te sterken. Op de baby afdeling ligt alle aandacht dan ook op de voeding en de verzorging. Kinderen liggen in hun eigen bedjes of worden op de grond gelegd als ze al kunnen zitten of kruipen. De verzorgsters geven de kinderen één voor één de fles. De aandacht die er wordt gegeven aan voeding werpt zijn vruchten af : het is bijzonder om te zien hoe goed en gezond de oudere kinderen er uit zien. Deze oudere kinderen zijn onderverdeeld in 2 groepen naar leeftijd. De oudste kinderen slapen op de bovenste etage. De activiteiten voor deze kinderen vinden buiten plaats in de schaduw van een boom. De verzorgsters maken de mooiste creaties van de haren van de meisjes, ook dit gebeurt buiten. En er wordt volop gerend en gespeeld met de speeltoestellen die er in de tuin staan. (schommels, klimhuisjes).

More and more Westerners want to adopt children, while the Third World offers fewer and fewer children for adoption. Therefore, the need to control the adoption market is growing so that children do not end up as a commodity

By Lars Henriksen and Henrik Hoffmann-Hansen

The Danish adoption system needs a major overhaul. In particular, the possibilities for controlling adoption organizations and orphanages must be looked into more closely.

That demand comes from several sides, after Danmarks Radio has revealed, among other things, the sale of adopted children from India. Yesterday, the revelations caused family and consumer affairs minister Carina Christensen (K) to temporarily stop new adoptions from the country. Yesterday she had a long-planned meeting with the adoption organisations, who want the adoption rules adjusted in several areas.

The demand for better control comes, among other things, from Adoption & Society, an independent, advisory association for adoptive parents and adoptees.

Sarah Johnson

Click to listen to the forum (mp3)

"...Every child has the right to grow up in a loving family or a family replacing situation." The UN Treaty of the rights of the child

But recent reports in the Dutch press show that there is a decidedly darker side to the system.