Search Results for: blog helping the children of haiti

Helping the Children of Haiti

As happened after the 2008 earthquake in China, adoption agencies have had numerous phone calls from people offering to adopt earthquake orphans. As I mentioned in my earlier blogs, children orphaned in a natural disaster or war are usually not free for adoption for a period of anywhere from six months to a year. The infrastructure must be repaired enough to ensure that family members have had the opportunity to locate children. So what can be done to help the children? First of all, remember that there are many children, in our own country and abroad, who are eligible for … Continue reading →

Celebs Offer Haiti Relief

Mary Ann and I have blogged about social consciousness as a part of green living and following the horrific 7.0 earthquake in Haiti, several celebrities are stepping up to help. Definitely putting their money where their mouths are (or in this case, their hearts) is Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie. While I would expect Brad and Angelina to donate – they definitely have a history of being an altruistic couple – I was very happy to read that they donated $1 million dollars to Doctors Without Borders. This team of medical professionals has dispatched staff, including surgeons, to Haiti to … Continue reading →

Celebrity Moms Adopt – Part 1

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A few famous celebrity moms have recently adopted children. They are all at different stages in their life – one is married, one is in a same-sex relationship, and one is a single mother. Actress Katherine Heigl said adoption was always a part of her family plan, even as a little girl. Maybe that’s because she came from a family that adopted. Heigl grew up with her sister Meg, who was adopted from Korea three years before Heigl was born. She has said in interviews that she always wanted a family that resembled the one in which she grew up. … Continue reading →

Clean the World the Disney Way

2010 stands apart in my book for the year of Disney volunteering. From the Give a Day, Get a Disney Day program to learning about the work Disney VoluntEARS do in their local communities, it’s clear that Disney has a strong current commitment to making the world a better place. The official Disney Parks blog shares a story about one of the VoluntEARS’ latest projects. The VoluntEARS from Walt Disney World Resort have partnered with Orlando-based nonprofit Clean the World to both promote the recycling of amenities and improve health in impoverished areas. Clean the World’s mission is to help … Continue reading →

An Update on the Adopted Child Sent Back to Russia

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The adoption agency World Association for Children and Parents (WACAP), which handled the adoption of Artem Savaliev, also called Justin Hansen, has filed a petition Tuesday in Bedford County, Tennessee, asking the court to investigate whether his abandonment (in his case, being sent back to Russia alone on a plane) constitutes abuse or neglect. The agency said in its petition that the adoptive mother Torrey Hansen and her mother Nancy Hansen had inflicted “severe emotional injury upon this minor child who has now been abandoned twice, by his biological and adoptive parents”. (The boy’s biological mother’s rights were terminated in … Continue reading →

Reassuring Kids in Times of Disaster

Even if you don’t let your kids watch the news, they likely know about the earthquake in Haiti through all the fund-raising projects going on (for more information about children’s fundraising projects, click here) and from hearing people talk about it. Maybe your child was afraid that they would be in an earthquake. Maybe you could get out of it by saying you don’t live in an earthquake zone. I couldn’t say that, so I’d have to go into detail about houses being built better, our earthquake kit having all the necessities in it, and having police and fire personnel … Continue reading →

From Apathy to Activism

This morning I read a lovely online report about a little boy who is raising thousands of dollars for Haiti relief with a sponsored bike ride. I think that’s wonderful. You see, I was that little boy. At age seven, I was writing letters to the government about air pollution and learning how to compost. I won the good citizen award for helping out other children on the playground. As an expectant parent, I pledged that my daughter would grow up knowing about the challenges that people face. She’d be kind to others and gentle on the environment. What’s changed? … Continue reading →

Positive Steps to Confront Stereotypes

In recent blogs I talked about anti-immigrant feeling in America today and whether it will have an unintended impact on our adopted children. I was thinking primarily of our Asian and Latino children, but a third-grader from Ethiopia was recently taunted in my neighborhood and told to go back to her country. In some parts of the U.S. the immigrant African population may be larger than the African-American population, so possibly more and more people will assume that African-heritage children are immigrants as well. And some of them are—Haiti and Liberia have been native countries of significant numbers of adopted … Continue reading →