By Vanne Elaine Terrazola

The Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD) has signed the implementing rules and regulations (IRR) of the law which institutionalizes the national feeding program for schoolchildren and another which simplifies the process of child adoption.

fficials signed on Monday the IRR of RA No. 11037, the Masustansyang Pagkain Para sa Batang Pilipino Act, and Republic Act No. 11222, the Simulated Birth Rectification Act, during a ceremony held in the DSWD central office in Quezon City.

Senator Grace Poe, author of both laws, was also invited to witness the IRR signing. She lauded the development as this would green light the rollout of the two laws.

“I’m extremely glad the IRRs are done. Without them, the laws remain as dreams unfulfilled,” she said in her speech.

Lisbeth Johansen could not turn away from the children in the slums of the Indian city of Kolkata. "You can almost call it a vocation," says the woman behind the aid organization LittleBigHelp

Most Danes can do without founding their own aid organization. They can also refrain from establishing an orphanage and a school for street children in a dirty, smelly slum in South Asia.

But Lisbeth Johansen could not do that when she traveled to Kolkata, formerly Calcutta, which is the capital of the eastern state of West Bengal in India, in 2010. Here she saw how children and adults struggled to survive in the slums. She saw children living alone on the streets sniffing glue, child prostitutes and a poverty so deep and hopeless that she felt compelled to stay and do something herself.

"Sometimes we encounter situations in life that we cannot turn away from. For me, this was one of those situations: I couldn't turn away," she says.

Lisbeth Johansen had ended up in Kolkata by chance, because it was the cheapest place in India to fly to from Thailand, where she stayed before. The plan was for her to stay in Kolkata for a few days and then travel on.

Children have given damning testimony in a new report into secure residential care.

Fifty-two children were interviewed for the report, released on Monday by the Office of the Children's Commissioner.

The study concluded that facilities for vulnerable youth are unhappy places which are not fit for purpose.

"I found this report extremely difficult to read, and I think most New Zealanders would too," said Children's Commissioner Andrew Becroft.

"Children and young people have the right to have their views heard, considered and taken seriously. The voices of the children and young people contained in this report are insistent. They are distressing. We must take them seriously."

MANILA - Sen. Grace Poe on Monday appealed to Cabinet officials to urge President Rodrigo Duterte to certify as urgent a bill which would hasten the process of adoption in the Philippines.

Poe, who was adopted by movie stars Susan Roces and the late Fernando Poe Jr., recently filed Senate Bill 1070 or the Domestic Administrative Adoption Act which seeks to establish an administrative adoption system and eliminate the judicial phase of adoption.

“This bill mirrors our belief that an administrative proceeding will hasten the process, minimize the cost, declog our courts, and prod more people to embark on the legal fasttrack to adopting a child,” Poe said in a speech during the ceremonial signing of the implementing rules of Republic Act 11222 or the Simulated Birth Rectification Act at the central office of the Department of Social Welfare and Development.

“So I would like to appeal to the Cabinet officials here today, to convince the President to certify this measure as urgent so it could fasttrack its way through Congress.”

Poe said that as of 2018, some 6,500 Filipino children were in need of a permanent home. Of this number, 3,973 have already been made legally available for adoption since 2009.

Baltimore, Maryland, Mon. October 7, 2019 — In August 2019 the Lumos Foundation USA renewed funding for International Social Service, USA (ISS-USA) to serve up to 50 returning children to Guatemala using their cross-border case management model and best practices outlined in International Social Service’s Children on the Move Guidelines. ISS-USA first received funding from Lumos in December 2018 for a six-month pilot program to provide services for up to 15 children returning to Guatemala after a separation at the US border. After an initial extension, the program is currently serving 26 families, which includes approximately 130 individuals.

Families in the ISS-USA Reunification and Reintegration Program receive comprehensive support services for six months after the child’s return home. A social worker visits each family prior to the child’s return, works with the family to understand their individual needs, and develops a comprehensive reintegration plan. The social worker accompanies the child’s reception in Guatemala and makes sure the child arrives safely home. Over the next six months, the social worker helps the child and his or her siblings to enroll in school, access medical and mental health services, support the parent’s access to vocational or skill-building programs, coordinate with local protection officials, and provide other basic household items to help stabilize the family situation.

“We are grateful to our partners in the US and Guatemala for the hard work on the Guatemala Reunification and Reintegration program,” said Julie Rosicky, Executive Director of ISS-USA. “With this additional investment we expect to support 130 more individuals affected by a traumatic family separation.”

Billy DiMichele, Chairman of Lumos USA’s Board of Directors, said “the Reunification and Reintegration Program is providing vital holistic services to support children, and strengthen families. We are delighted to renew our partnership with ISS-USA and appreciate their commitment to this valuable work.”

ISS-USA, Lumos and their Guatemalan partners are able to serve children up to age 18 throughout Guatemala. If you are working with children who have experienced a family separation, please contact eweisman@iss-usa.org for more information on how this program can help prepare for a safe and stable return to family.

IT doesn’t matter what your church allegiance is, or even if you have none; most people think that the Missionaries of Charity, the religious order founded by Mother Teresa, is a good thing.

The order, with 4,500 nuns, is dedicated to ‘wholehearted free service to the poorest of the poor’. The nuns care for refugees, former prostitutes, the mentally ill, sick and abandoned children, lepers, those with Aids, the aged, the convalescent. They run schools staffed by volunteers to educate street children. They run soup kitchens to feed the destitute. All this is provided free of charge and open to anyone regardless of religion, race or caste.

The Missionaries of Charity have a pretty impressive résumé, one probably unmatched anywhere in the world. But then there is poverty in India probably unmatched in any other country with its own space programme.

India has one of the fastest growing economies in the world and a growing middle class, but poverty, although dropping, is widespread. In 2014, the Rangarajan Committee, heading by a former Governor of the Reserve Bank of India, said the population below the poverty line in 2009-2010 numbered 454million (38.2 per cent of the population) and in 2011-2012 had dropped to 363million (29.5 per cent of the population). In India poverty means poverty. According to the government’s own figures, rural poverty in 2011 meant having less than 816 rupees, or £9.33 a month, or 31p a day.

There is still ample need for the Sisters of the Missionaries of Charity.

In-depth afternoon for adult adoptees a great success

Last Saturday Plan Kiskeya organized an information meeting & in-depth afternoon with the theme "Haiti & Identity". In the Nieuwe Poort in Rotterdam a group of more than 30 Haitian adult adopted people came together to delve into their Haitian background and the different identities from their Haitian origin, Dutch context and, of course, African heritage.

Hostess Iris van Lunenburg, also adopted from Haiti and known from, among other things, the television program "Iris investigates", opened the afternoon and connected the parts that followed.

Marcel Catsburg, writer of the recently published book "Land without rest - fault lines in Haitian soil", presented a cultural and historical perspective to better understand today's Haiti.

Clinical chemist Jos van der Stappen shared his DNA expertise, the possibilities but also the limitations of kinship research that are important for those who want to find their family through DNA research.

It must take undying conviction and courage to fight for what hasn’t been given to an entire community by the patriarchal society that we live in. Yet Akkai Padmashali and her husband Vasu’s unflinching activism for acceptance and inclusion has made them the first-ever transcouple to legally adopt their three-and-a-half-month old son recently. This may be the latest achievement as the first trans person ever to do so but for Padmashali this is certainly not her ‘first’ achievement.

Bangalore-based Padmashali, who tried to kill herself at the age of 12 because it became difficult for her to deal with the pressures of being called out a different gender than what she believed herself to be, has now been battling it out for the rights of the trans community for three decades now. In these 30 years of working with various organisations and the government she has a lot to show, Padmashali first had to fight for acceptance as a transgender person in Karnataka and then to get her marriage registered. Next she became the first transgender person in the country to get a driving license stating her gender as female and the first transperson to receive the Rajyotsava Prashasti, the second-highest civilian honour of the state of Karnataka.

Talking to SheThePeople.TV about the recent adoption of her son, she says she dreamt of adopting a child since the time she was unmarried. “After getting married, I and Vasu, we both felt that we need a child. The adoption of a baby was a long-held desire and a dream for me. But after marrying Vasu, the hope now seemed a reality. So, we approached a few orphanages but they refused to give us a child assuming that transgenders are mostly seen on the streets as sex workers and beggars. Their notion was that if they give us a child then by default the child will be forced into sex work or begging, but that’s not the case with us, I will let my child decide what he wants to do in life. It will be his decision entirely.

As a woman and a feminist, I need to see a child as a child. The assigned sex might be a boy or a male but let me not decide it for my child. I want him to grow as a child who can decide for himself what gender he wants to give himself,” says Padmashali who adopted her son from her sister’s relative.

On how can we as a society let children grow with people of all genders and if we have reached there yet, she is of the opinion that it would only be possible with people who have a progressive outlook. She recounts one incident from her life when she visited one of her friends’ houses where the friend’s mother shut the eyes of her 2.5-year-old grandson so he couldn’t see Padmashali, just because she is a transwoman.

On October 2, 2019, the Intercountry Adoption Accreditation and Maintenance Entity (IAAME) suspended the approval of A Love Beyond Borders (ALBB) for failing to maintain substantial compliance with accreditation standards.

During this suspension, ALBB must cease to provide all adoption services in connection with intercountry adoption cases. ALBB is required to transfer their cases to another accredited or approved adoption service provider. If you have an open case with ALBB, please contact them directly to find out how the suspension will affect your case. We also encourage families to review the information published by IAAME about selecting a primary provider/adoption service provider and the accreditation/approval requirements.

Affected families may wish to review information about Case Transfer Responsibilities on the Department of State’s website.

The Department of State does not review or approve case transfer plans and has a limited role in their execution. The Department communicates with competent adoption authorities about the accreditation status of agencies and persons and case transfer plans, as needed. The Department also facilitates communication to the public about the outcome of accrediting entity determinations.

For more information, see IAAME’s website. If you have any questions about this announcement, you may direct them to IAAME at contact@iaame.net.

With adoption, the truth is ultimately the best

Council investigator Ans Bosman tells about searching for your origin and the importance of clear legislation.

Ans Bosman has been working as a council investigator for more than forty years at the RvdK in Rotterdam, where she mainly did adoption cases. "If adoptive children are told that they have been ceded, they may be sad about that," says Ans. "Processing their unknown past is comparable to a mourning period. People struggle with questions about their origins and origins and ask themselves: who am I really? ”The RvdK has been approaching a large group of people for years looking for information about their descent, for example because they have been abandoned or have been abandoned. foundling. Ans has supported many of these people in their search and therefore knows from experience how important that knowledge is. "That's how I know a middle-aged woman who has persisted in her search for years. At regular intervals she comes by to dig through her entire file for the umpteenth time. She does that, as she says herself, hoping to find a clue to her past. "

The passage of time does not ease the sorrow of an unknown past. "We recently helped a 70-year-old woman with information about her pedigree," says Ans. "Now that she had grandchildren, she went looking for her origins. We have found an old file about her adoption. Then you see that, even in old age, all kinds of things suddenly fall into place. People can, for example, place traits of themselves that caused them to fall out of tune in their adoptive family. "

Honesty is the best policy