Editor's note: This story was posted Wednesday on the Atlas Obscura website.

Last week, Atlas Obscura announced the five finalists for First Journey, the competition we launched this year to send one of our readers on their first real journey. The idea was inspired by our co-founders, Dylan Thuras and Josh Foer, who both went on transformative journeys of their own when they were younger.

This year being Atlas Obscura's 10th anniversary, we decided to celebrate by giving someone out there — a person with an amazing idea who just needed the means to pull it off — $15,000 to take a meaningful, life-changing trip.

Thousands applied, and our panel of judges spent weeks narrowing down an incredibly impressive field of applicants to just a handful of finalists. Each of the four runners-up is being awarded $500, which, we hope, will serve as seed money toward making their journeys a reality.

And now, at last, we couldn't be more thrilled to announce that the winner of First Journey — who receives $15,000, logistical support and will be featured on Atlas Obscura — is Jenn Smith of North Adams, Mass.!

Alex Gilbert was two years old when he was adopted from a Russian orphanage by his New Zealand parents.

Now, 25 years later he's helping Kiwis reunite with their birth parents, like he did.

Mr Gilbert is filming every step of the journey for a new TVNZ reality series called Reunited.

He spoke to Seven Sharp about the details of the show.

"We are starting a show called Reunited which helps other adopted people from all over the world and in New Zealand reach out to their birth families.

In the final days of the Vietnam war, Operation Babylift evacuated 3,000 children and took them to the West to be adopted.

Not all were orphans; many of them, now middle-aged adults, are still searching for their roots.

When David Matthew Redmon met his birth mother at Saigon airport, it was as if his own ghost were being laid to rest.

“For more than 40 years, my mother lived with the thought that she had killed her son,” says David, 47, as he recalls finally meeting the woman from his faded childhood dreams.

On that day in August 2015, David had flown to Ho Chi Minh City from Boston, where he was brought up by adoptive parents. He spent most of the 20 or so hours in the air rehearsing every possible scenario, yet still it was not enough to prepare him. As he passed immigration at Tan Son Nhat International he saw an elderly lady dressed in a purple ao ba ba , a traditional South Vietnamese garment, and suddenly it was as if those childhood dreams had come to life. “When that moment came, my emotions simply took over and I cried like a child.”

By Ellalyn de Vera Ruiz

Legal adoption experts, foreign diplomats, and representatives of local and international child-caring and child placement institutions have gathered together in Manila to further boost public awareness on the process of inter-country adoption.

Led by the Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD), through the Inter-Country Adoption Board (ICAB), the 15th Philippine Global Consultation on Child Welfare Services anchored on the theme, “Identifying the Needs of Children in Inter-country Adoption.”

The global consultation, which takes place every other year, serves as a platform to discuss and review policies and procedures to ensure that the best interest of Filipino children who are up for inter-country adoption will be prioritized and upheld.

DSWD Secretary and ICAB chair Rolando Joselito Bautista led the event and served as the keynote speaker.

New Delhi, India, Sep 30, 2019 / 02:05 pm (CNA).- A religious sister with the Missionaries of Charity has been released on bail 15 months after her arrest. She is accused of cooperating with the sale of a child from a home for unwed mothers, although her supporter argue that she was coerced into confessing.

Sister Concelia Baxla, 62, was arrested in July 2018, along with Anima Indwar, an employee at the Nirmal Hriday home in Ranchi.

Sr. Concelia was released Sept. 27 on a 10,000 rupee bail, the equivalent of $150, and two sureties of the same amount, ucanews reports. The sister was also instructed to leave her passport at the court.

The religious sister, who suffers from diabetes, had been denied bail twice previously – once last October on the grounds that her release could interfere with the investigation into her congregation, and again in January because charges had not yet been pressed, according to ucanews.

Her lawyer argued that Sr. Concelia should be granted bail because she is not facing direct charges, and noted that Indwar was granted bail shortly after her initial arrest.

My diary about our adoption, being a family and being a mother

Archive for the month of July 2015

At home, a day later on July 29th

JULY 29, 2015

Today was over twenty-four hours. It feels like ages ago that we left Russia behind. But only a few hours have passed since our arrival in Germany. We are at home! Richard and I still can not believe that our life as a family started. Our children will stay with us and no one can ever take them back from us. It seems like a dream from which we have to wake up someday.

Analysis of adoptions from the Russian Federation to Germany

based on the mediation practice of the Foreign Adoption Agency "Zukunft für Kinder e. V. "

Author / Editor: Julia Richter

Edition: 2016

product form

Unser Team

Der Vorstand

Carolin Sorg

1. Vorstandsvorsitzende

Sozialarbeiterin/-pädagogin (B.A.)

golfi schrieb:

Citaat:

Einen Anwalt einzuschalten halte ich für schwierig, da es keine Garantie für ein Kind gibt, denn es werden Eltern für Kinder ausgesucht und man versucht darzustellen, dass die Länder die Kinder aussuchen und nicht die Vermittlungsstellen. Falls Ihr noch einen Versuch startet empfehle ich Euch brav zu sein und niemals aufzumucken.

Ja, und ich möchte noch hinzufügen, es gibt kein Recht auf ein Kind.

_________________

The business with the foreign adoption

In Germany, almost every tenth couple between 25 and 59 years is unintentionally childless.

Depending on the method, artificial insemination only has a success rate of between 10 and 20 percent and the prospect of adoption in Germany is much lower.

So often only the way of a foreign adoption. The chances of having a child from Russia, Mongolia or Peru are far better. But only if a couple is willing and able to invest a high five-figure amount.

The longing for a child has long since developed into a lucrative business model, and since foreign agencies are exclusively private associations, there is almost no limit on pricing.