Letter From The President

Warm greetings!

First off, this past May marked our agency’s 15th year anniversary! It has been a wonderful 15 years working with all of you and helping over 8,000 children find their families. Looking back, I never thought that we would be where we are today. 15 years ago, when I founded the agency, my only thought was, "There are thousands of babies and children lying in the cribs in China, and I need to do something."

15 years later, we have become one of most respected intercountry adoption and humanitarian aid organizations in the world with programs in 14 countries. Please accept my humble gratitude to you and to my dedicated staff worldwide, for helping us continue with our mission of finding loving families for children in need.

Please read on for our latest Great Wall and Children of All Nations updates!

China Program

The past two months have witnessed happy news for our agency and families. We received high praises from the China Center for Children’s Welfare and Adoption (CCCWA, formerly CCAA) that our agency post adoption procedures are above standards, and they have encouraged other agencies to learn from us! I am very proud of the efforts our staff and social worker put into our post adoption procedures to ensure that our families and adoptive children receive the support the need after returning from China.

Our China Waiting Child Program continues to grow with more and more families, thanks to the new Special Focus program, adopting two children, and in some cases three. About 120 families have been matched with their waiting children so far this year. I know that the Waiting Child Program is not meant for everybody, but I encourage our families in waiting to attend our China Waiting Child webinar hosted by Dr. Allison Stock, an adoptive mother of three waiting children. At the very least, I hope it provides you with food for thought.

Our Marketing and Waiting Child teams have recently enhanced and improved our online Waiting Child Questionnaire and created a better database so our wonderful Waiting Child team is able to match children and families more effectively. We are constantly looking for new Waiting Child Questionnaires from our families.

In early June, we launched fundraising efforts to build playgrounds in our ICAN Hope Chengdu and Shenzhen orphanages. These are two orphanages in China that we are approved by CCCWA to exclusively advocate for and place their Waiting Children. This means that we have sent our expert team of social workers and staff to conduct face-to-face evaluations and taken many photos and even video clips of the kids. The benefit of having such access is that we are able to provide families with more information on the children from these SWIs and obtain updates. We have challenged our families to donate just $25 each with an ultimate goal of $20,000. We are about $6,000 of the way there, and that portion has been sent to China to get the first playground underway. Your support of $25 or more is very much appreciated! Please visit our "GWCAN Outreach" section to learn more about our ICAN Hope Playground Fund.

Children of All Nations

Our African programs continue to grow. More and more families are signing on to adopt from the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and Uganda. It is not hard to see why these families feel called to adopt children from these regions, given the period of conflict and the flagrant crimes against children which has been coming to light only relatively recently in the Western media. Aside from the poverty these children live with, even deeper is the need for love and arms to show them what love means. We are thrilled with the pioneering mindset our DRC and Uganda families have put forth to find their children in these places.

Meanwhile, we have received news that Ethiopia continues to issue referrals, including ones for our Ethiopia families. We celebrate each one with them and update our families with news as it arrives from Ethiopia.

In late May, we launched our Russia adoption program, partnered with a Russia-accredited agency. Please read more about this country and children in the Russia section of our "Program Updates". The sheer number of children waiting for families in state institutions is unthinkable.

We will continue to open new countries so we can provide our families with more options for their adoption journeys and find loving homes for vulnerable children without parents. We will have a few more new country programs from Africa, Eastern Europe and South America opening this year. Please continue to watch our site and news for these developments.

Advocacy

I want to share with you all about a recent International Adoption (IA) strategy meeting I had the honor of attending in New York City to represent the Institute of Children of All Nations. The meeting was called upon by the leading human rights and child advocate activist, Harvard Law school professor, Dr. Elizabeth Bartholet (a keynote speaker at our 2010 Beyond Borders Conference). There were a total of 15 in attendance, including leading international human right activists, lawyers in IA policies, Craig Juntunen of the "Both Ends Burning" campaign (who will also be a keynote speaker in this fall's BBC), influential evangelical groups, a Washington D.C. media firm and former congressional staff.

The agenda was mainly to come up with strategies to counter the current IA crisis. In the past six years, IA has plummeted from 22,990 (in 2004) to 11,059 (in 2010). One of the crucial points of our agenda is to engage in dialogue with the White House, the U.S. Congress, and UNICEF to obtain its support towards IA. Another important point is to reinforce positive messages regarding IA to the public. There are many misconceptions and much misunderstanding out there toward IA. I’m sure you have heard it in your community, perhaps amongst your network of family and friends.

We want everyone to know that, no matter how well an orphanage is equipped, it is still not a home.

My point in sharing this is to let you know that we, adoptive families and adoption professionals, are facing huge challenges in finding loving homes for orphaned children. Millions of children are wrongly detained, live in impoverished countries and are stuck in limbo, lost and anonymous. We will not back down.

We are here to raise awareness and be the voice for these - our - vulnerable kids.

Thank you for listening,

Snow Wu
President/CEO