On Saturday we went to a very special adoption gathering! Zeweditu Yashu, the director from the Gelgela Orphanage in Ethiopia came all the way to Canada to see all her babies!! Kumera was from this orphanage! There were about 20 children from her orphanage at this event. It was an incredible experience to meet her and for her to see and hold Kumera again! Kumera would have been only a few weeks old when he was in her orphanage before he went to the CAFAC foster home. We visited the orphanage when we were in Ethiopia, but we didn't get to meet Zeweditu because she wasn't there that day.

She doesn't speak English, so Selemneh was there to translate. Most families adopting from Ethiopia know who Selemneh is. For those who don't, he was the past travel coordinator for CAFAC Adoption Agency. (And he's also the one who appears in the book "There is No Me Without You".)

Zeweditu had a speech and said how happy she was to see all her children happy and healthy and with loving families! It was heartwarming! At the end she presented each child with a beautiful scarf from Ethiopia! Kumera wanted nothing to do with her or the scarf, so I hope he'll be glad to have been a part of this when he's older.

She was going to be travelling to Saskatchewan and Alberta to attend adoption gatherings there as well and to see more of her babies! It must be so exciting for her!

!

Posted: Sat, Sep 19 2009. 1:15 AM IST

Skin deep

Adopted by an American family 25 years ago, Goa-born Nisha Grayson is coming back ‘home’ in search of her birth mother and herself

Melissa A. Bell

When Nisha Grayson was in second grade, her school class in California, US, put up a performance. “Don’t come!” Nisha told her mom on the day of the event. Stephanie Grayson went anyway. When she walked into the classroom and a child shouted “Whose mommy are you?” Nisha just hunched up, blushed and kept silent.

Win a raffle, become a parent

By Josephine Marcotty, Star Tribune

Last update: March 11, 2010 - 6:59 PM

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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.

NOVEMBER 26, 2009

Great News for Thanksgiving

We've received our official referral and travel approval today. We'll be leaving for Bulgaria on December 12th and staying until the 19th. We'll be working on flights and a hotel in Sofia now.

Posted by Michael at 1:46 PM 8 comments

NOVEMBER 17, 2009

Mothers looking for answers after losing babies

11 Mar, 2010 08:51 AM

SUE never wanted to give her baby away.

But like so many other pregnant, unwed teenage girls in the 1960s, she had no choice.

Now 58, Sue has spent most of her live grieving for her baby girl lost through the “wicked” government-sanctioned adoption policies of the 1950s, 60s, 70s and 80s.

Trafic d'enfant et adoption

Un réseau d'adoption illégale à Madagascar, à destination de la France

AMADEA, ONG fondée en 1986, Organisme Autorisé pour l’Adoption (OAA) habilité pour Madagascar depuis 1990 et membre de la Fédération française des OAA (FOAA), s’est trouvé confronté et attaqué de front par de ce qui semble être un réseau d’adoption illégale dans la région de Toamasina (Tamatave) à Madagascar.

L’œuvre d’adoption française a signé une convention de partenariat avec le centre Nomena qui recueille des enfants abandonnés sur cette partie de l’Ile.

Nôry, petite fille de 2 ans et demi fait partie de ces enfants et son jugement d’adoption par une famille française est prononcé le 5/11/2003. Il ne sera notifié que 2,5 mois plus tard (délai de recours légal : un mois).

Invalid death certificate puts BC couple in African adoption limbo

March, 9, 2010 - 08:30 pm Mertl, Steve - (THE CANADIAN PRESS)

VANCOUVER -A B.C. couple has been separated for months after its effort to adopt twin boys from Ghana turned into a bureaucratic nightmare.

Andrea Bastin, a filmmaker from Bowen Island near Vancouver, has been living in the West African country since August as she tries to convince the Canadian High Commission there that the boys' mother died giving birth.

But her effort is complicated by the fact the death certificate she first submitted turned out to be bogus, raising a red flag in a region where child trafficking is common.

10 March 2010

Couple wait for adoption paperwork to be approved by Canadian High Commission

A Canadian couple from the province of British Columbia have been caught in bureaucratic limbo while in the process of adopting twin boys from Ghana.

The Canadian High Commission in Ghana was not convinced that the death certificate of the children’s mother is a legitimate document, a concern in the region where child trafficking is common.

Andrea Bastin and her husband Michael Segal, from Bowen Island near Vancouver, say they have since produced the proper death certificate along with hospital records and affidavits from the mother’s family.

Economic and Social Council

ECOSOC/6393

NGO/670

Department of Public Information • News and Media Division • New York

Committee on NGOs