Bellingham, Wash., 12 December 1997 (RFE/RL) -- The World Association for Children and Parents is an American private and not-for-profit agency created 21 years ago by parents who had adopted foreign-born children.
Since then WACAP, to use the English-language acronym usually employed, has provided health care, medical supplies, vitamins, clothing and scholarships to more than 100,000 children in 10 countries -- among them, in more recent years, Russia and Romania. It has also placed nearly 8,000 foreign children without families with American families. And it maintains a project in Romania that seeks to help children out of institutions such as orphanages by returning them to their families, if possible, or, if not possible, find new parents for them.
WACAP remains loyal to its guiding philosophy that "every child deserves the right to experience family life." The 43 members of its staff adopted 35 adopted children of their own.
The agency is based in Renton, Washington, the home of the giant airplane and aeronautics company, Boeing, adjacent to Seattle. Last month it received a visitor from the Russian Ministry of Education in Vladivostok, Nikolai Shugai. His visit was prompted by two recent cases of extreme abuse by American couples who had adopted Russian children -- neither of whom were placed by WACAP.
WACAP's executive director, Janice Nielsen, told RFE/RL that she was "shocked and saddened and horrified" by those two cases of abuse. But, she adds, they really are the exception, not the rule among foreign adoptions of which she is aware.
