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Children or commodities?

Children or commodities? 17 Mar 2010, 1840 hrs IST 18 year old Anisha Mortel lives all alone in Germany. Abandoned by her foster parents after they separated, Anisha came to India in search of her biological mother who claims her daughter was sold off by a children's home who had stolen her. TIMES NOW investigates the reasons why children like Anisha Mortel are forever searching answers to who really is responsible for what they are. Anisha was born in 1992 and was entrusted to 'Tender Loving Care Home'. All that Fathima wanted for her daughter was a better life. She says a children's home promised her exactly that. Fathima did not see her child for the next 28 years. Fathima, Anisha's biological mother, said, "I went back to ask for my kid. She said don't ask for the child. You gave her off to us. I protested. But she said give money for taking care of the child. I didn't have any. She sold off the kid for 6 lakh." Fatima had handed over her baby to Sister Teresa who counters the claim. Sister Teresa said, "What money is Anisha's mother talking about, she wanted to sell the child. She threw the child here. The baby was sick. I was taking care of her." Tender Loving Care Home is under the scanner in adoption racket. There are no papers to prove either party wrong or right but what has put the scanner on Sister Teresa's home is that in 2005 TLC Home was found guilty and the home's license cancelled. Fathima could not find her daughter at the orphanage because the child was not even in the country. Her daughter was given up for adoption and taken in by a couple in Germany. Fathima's daughter lived with her foster parents unaware of her mother's struggle in India. Anisha said, "I believe that adopted children are always somehow connected to their country. No matter what happened, no matter how old you were, you always feel it's a part of you and you can't cut it out." In January 2010 Anisha Moertel returned to India, met the woman who gave her birth. Anisha said, "In Germany I have no home since I left my parent's house. I have no place to breath out. It's so good to find my mother in India." This reunion might have happened but questions are being raised about the 26 lives that are still at the home run by Sister Teresa. Children at the home voice their concern: 1. I want to go to Spain. My Mummy calls on Saturday. Q: Where does she live? Where does she call you from? A: From Spain. Q: Do you want to meet her? A: Yes, I want to meet her. I want to go there because Mummy, daddy are there. 2. child at the home - "If I go to Germany, I will be happy. They will care for me." What is confounding is that despite a high court order allowing the home to hold in-country adoptions, Sister Teresa refussees to give these children to prospective Indian parents. Sister Teresa speaking on children being given for adoption to Indian families said, "Why should they go to Indian families? Many Indian families only make them work as maids." Over 600 children are sold to foreigners every year, not always to happier homes. For these young lives it is a constant search for answers and who really is responsible for what they are - too young to know how papers exchanged and changed their destinies - too young to matter as votebanks and too young for anyone to care enough to change their lives.

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This is a letter from my friend Michelle- the founder of the orphanages in Ethiopia. Please read it and then please pray that God would work His will and show off His power to us as we try to understand which direction He would have us go.

"Dear Prospective Adoptive Parents,

Thank you so much for your patience awaiting news on the status of our work in Ethiopia. I know it is very frustrating not to hear news, and I plan to send you all an update each Thursday

I want to be completely forthright and let you know exactly what is happening. First, I am so sorry that I unintentionally misled some of you prior to my recent trip to Ethiopia, saying that our orphanage license was completed. Although that is what I understood from Getachew, our Ethiopian program director, apparently he meant to tell me that he had been told the final paperwork would be finished in two days. I understood him to say that the final paperwork WOULD be finished in two day, and didn’t understand that he had been told this but that didn’t mean it would actually happen.

Keynote Speakers for T4A 2010 in Austin

Keynote Speakers for T4A 2010 in Austin

by Dan ~ March 17th, 2010

God has provided us with a fantastic lineup of keynote speakers for our upcoming October 1-2 conference in Austin, Texas. We could not be any more grateful to God for the people he has provided us. Our conference theme is “The Gospel, the Church, and the Global Orphan Crisis.” Conference details and the opportunity to begin registering are forthcoming. Below is our list of keynote speakers (our breakout session list will be added shorly). For more information about T4A 2010 in Austin, visit our conference page. It will be updated regularly.

Darrin Patrick – Topic: “The Trinity as Model and Motive for Church-based Orphan Care.”

Darrin founded The Journey in 2002 with a desire to plant a church in the heart of St. Louis, Missouri. Darrin is Vice President of the Acts 29 Church Planting Network, and also serves as the executive director for another church planting movement called 360-St. Louis, a network joining the church and the business community in planting gospel-centered churches. Darrin’s passion is to equip the church to live the gospel in the world. Darrin’s first book, Church Planter: The Man, The Message, The Mission, will be released in August 2010. Today, The Journey runs seven services across four campuses, while continuing to be aggressive in church planting in St. Louis and beyond. Darrin is married to his high school sweetheart, Amie, and they have four beautiful children: Glory, Grace, Drew, and Delaney. Darrin enjoys vacations with his family, basketball, good food, good books, good movies, and weightlifting.

Tony Lake Picked as UNICEF Chief

Tony Lake Picked as UNICEF Chief

Mark Leon Goldberg - March 16, 2010 - 1:42 pm

UN DirectSecurity

Secretary General Ban Ki Moon appointed President Bill Clinton's former National Security Adviser and Obama confidant Anthony Lake to be the next head of UNICEF. Josh Rogin reported a few weeks back that the Obama administration had nominated Anthony Lake for the spot. And since UNICEF chief is a job that typically goes to an American, it was all but assured that Lake would replace former Secretary of Agriculture Ann Venemen when her five-year term expires.

Here is ban's official pronouncement:

Jennifer Haynes meets her long-lost brother

Jennifer Haynes meets her long-lost brother

2010-03-16

Mayura Janwalkar

Mumbai: Jennifer Haynes, 28, who was deported to India abruptly in 2008, finally traced her roots after over a year-long search. She met her brother, Christopher, 24, who lives in Ambernath. But in the reunion there was no drama, no emotion.

“I felt nothing. Nothing hurts anymore. I only think of my kids,” Haynes said.

Haynes, a mother of two, was adopted by US national George and Melissa Hancox in 1989. Haynes, however, claims she had a rough childhood in 50 different foster homes and suffered sexual abuse. She was deported by the US immigration authorities as her citizenship formalities were not completed at the time of her adoption.

“My brother visited me in Chembur with his wife and child. He’s a tailor and they’re very poor,” said a stoic Haynes. “We do look alike. He never went to school and grew up on the streets. He still calls me Pinky,” Haynes said. Arguing before the court on Monday, her advocate Pradeep Havnur said Haynes’s mother had left her in the care of Clarice D’souza of the now defunct Kuanyin Charitable Trust for a few days and D’souza without authorisation from Haynes’s parents had given her away in a foreign adoption.

“My mother died in 2006 but my father is in an alcoholic rehabilitation center. I met my aunt who told me that he took to alcohol after I was sent abroad without his knowledge,” Haynes said.

Seeking the de-registration of the Americans for International Aid and Adoption that processed her adoption, Havnur said Haynes’s should be treated as a state guest as she does not have accommodation or a job here.

Additional solicitor general DJ Khambata said, “I wish we could have done that for millions of Indians too.”

Khambata told the court that the government was willing to help Haynes seek a US citizenship on humanitarian grounds. Justice FI Rebello and justice Amjad Sayed have directed Haynes to apply to the US authorities on humanitarian grounds in two weeks.

Blog: A Trip That Would Change Our Lives!!

March 15, 2010

A Trip That Would Change Our Lives!!

On February 8, 2010, Tara left with 3 other members of the Adoption Ministry Team to visit Ethiopia and meet up with our partner adoption agency CWA. The trips purpose was to meet the staff of CWA in Ethiopia, learn about the adoption process in Ethiopia, tour the orphanages that CWA financially supports, meet the children we could potentially bring to Bozeman for the Summer Of Hope program in July and to experience the culture of Ethiopia giving us a better understanding of their customs and rich history.

After flight problems, we finally arrived in Ethiopia on the morning of February 10th(Wed.) and were greeted by 2 of the CWAE(Christian World Adoption Ethiopia) staff. Unfortunately, my luggage along with one other team member had been lost en-route and so we filled out the necessary paperwork and left not knowing when it would show up.

We spent the next 2 days in Addis Ababa, the capital of Ethiopia, getting to know the "lay of the land" and meeting with the CWAE staff. They are amazing people and we quickly became very fond of them all. By Friday morning we were able to retrieve our lost bags at the airport. This was good as we were heading to Hawassa that morning. After about a 3 hour car ride through the country side we ended up at the Shashamene orphanage. They kindly greeted us with a traditional Ethiopian coffee ceremony(which I highly recommend for all of you coffee lovers out there) and allowed us the privilege of touring their orphanage facility. After about 30 minutes we were back in the car and on to Hawassa which was less than 30 minutes away. We arrived at the CCCE Hawassa orphanage and again greeted with a traditional coffee ceremony. We would take a quick tour and come back the next day to meet the children and stay longer. Then we were onto the Tikuret Orphanage where we would meet the children identified for the SOH program.

When we arrived, we were greeted by a group of children with beautiful, smiling faces. It was hard not to just drop everything and play with them, but we had "work" to accomplish and so we divided up and individually met with children trying to get to know them better so we could help match families in Bozeman with children when they committed to hosting this summer. After many beautiful faces and sad stories(children orphaned due to poverty, disease, death and cultural norms) we neared the last group of kids. The orphanage director then began to speak to us about 2 other groups of children who she wanted to know about possibly being a part of SOH, but thought they maybe too old. We decided to go ahead and meet the kids just in case a family stepped forward and wanted older kids. We first met a boy who was 13 and then we met the 2nd group, 2 girls who were sisters...Meskerem and Zenash.

I looked up as they walked into the room and the most unexplainable feeling occurred in my heart. I was immediately drawn to them and felt an overwhelming and undeniable sense of connection to them. The girls sat down and we talked with them asking the same typical questions we asked all of the children..."What do you like to eat?", "What do you like to play?", etc. Then we asked "Do you have any other siblings?" Meskerem(the oldest girl of the two who was 14) began to explain they had a 10 year old brother named Warku who was living on the street under the bridge with his friends. The director was obviously surprised and after an exchange in Amharic, she translated to us that the girls had a brother and that she would find him and bring him to the orphanage to live. We got to the end of the questions and I found myself wanting to come up with more just so I could be with them longer, but it was dinner time and I didn't want to keep them. We were kindly served dinner by the orphanage...the traditional Ethiopian food of injeera(their staple bread), doro wat(chicken stew), and vegetables. I found myself unable to stop thinking of the girls and after finishing dinner I asked if I could go up to the girls area to talk with them more. There were about 8 girls that shared this large room containing bunk beds and when I came in they were all studying and hanging out. We talked, well, we tried to with the language barrier, they mostly giggled at me because they didn't understand what I was saying except for a few words here and there. We took some pictures together and then retired to our hotel after visiting the boys area at the orphanage.

I was trying to process through the day and what I was feeling and what I sensed God had laid on my heart, which was that he had something in store for my family with this sibling group. I wrestled with so many thoughts wondering if the day had just all come to a head for me and if I had just felt overwhelmingly burdened for the orphans I came face to face with that day. I know now in looking back that what was going on inside of my heart and my soul was so completely unexplainable because it was the closest to the heart of God that I have ever experienced as a Christ Follower. It was excitement, it was love for these children that I didn't know, it was a longing, it was peace. I knew He was asking me to tell Ty about them and so I emailed him and asked him to pray about these kids that I had met. I told him it was a sibling group of 3. It was way more than we had ever discussed previously when we spoke of adopting one day. We were thinking 1 little girl from an Asian country... this was 3 children from Ethiopia! What was God thinking?!

Stiller Sehnsucht

Stille Sehnsucht

Gesellschaftsdrama, BRD/SLO 2004, 100 Min.

Originaltitel: Warchild

mit Labina Mitevska, Senad Basic, Katrin Sass, Zdenko Jelcic, Crescentia Dünßer u.a.

Regie: Christian Wagner

Christians needed to love orphans in Russia

Christians needed to love orphans in Russia

POSTED: 12 MARCH, 2010

Topics in this story: babies , christians , mission trip , orphans , russia , vbs

MNN and Orphan Outreach are teaming up together to take a team to Russia.

Russia (MNN) ? There are more than 700,000 orphan and street children in Russia alone. With drug and alcohol abuse, HIV/AIDS, and a poor economy, the situation isn't getting any better. More and more children are becoming wards of the state. That means more and more are ending up in "the system." They're institutionalized. They're placed in orphanages.

Hague Invitation - June Conference

IAML Representative at Hague Conference

Dear Fellow,

The IAML have been invited to send a representative to participate as an observer in the Third meeting of the Special Commission to review the practical operation of theHague Convention of 29 May 1993 on Protection of Children and Co-operation in Respect of Intercountry Adoption, to take place on 17-25 June 2010 in The Hague, Netherlands.

The meeting will address the following broad themes:

Discussion on the abduction, sale and traffic in children in the context of adoption (1 day)

EAC: Now open in Serbia

We Are Now Opened in Serbia!

It just keeps on getting better, with new programs opened up in India and Bulgaria, we are excited to add Serbia to the group!

Read more for details on the new program…

Processes and Procedures

• Complete and submit the Application for Adoption.