Ethics in Adoption Conference

We here at Fleas Biting and all those who are concerned about ethical adoption practice, are excited about the upcoming Ethics and Accountability in Adoption Conference to be held next month (October 2007) in Arlington, VA.

Co-sponsored by Ethica and the Evan B. Donaldson Institute, the conference will feature more than 80 confirmed speakers, including among others, our own Usha from here at Fleas Biting.

There will be also be time to meet and mix with several bloggers including Usha and I, during the "Meet the Bloggers" reception.

Please consider joining us and others concerned about adoption ethics and accountability for this conference.

Adoption Ethics and Accountability Conference
October 15-16, 2007
Arlington, Virginia


The Evan B. Donaldson Adoption Institute and Ethica, Inc. are co-sponsoring an exciting and timely conference, Adoption Ethics and Accountability, in Arlington, VA. This is the second conference hosted by the Adoption Institute that focuses on critical ethical issues in the field today.

Join us as we explore ethical issues in adoption with adoption experts and members of the adoption community. Conference participants will have the opportunity to attend panel discussions and workshops focusing on a variety of issues including birthfamily rights, transracial adoption, birthfamily and records searches, industry regulation, and best practices.

Dates: Monday/Tuesday - October 15-16, 2007

Fee: $325 full conference registration ($162 one day)

Location: Marriott Crystal Gateway
1700 Jefferson Davis Highway,
Arlington , VA
1-800-228-9290 or 703-920-3230

When making your hotel reservation, reference Adoption Ethics Conference to get your reduced rate:
$179 for single/double; $189 for triple and $209 for quad.

Book now - Rates are normally $269 to $329 and higher.

If you are interested in sharing a room with another conference attendee, please contact kjohnson @ adoptioninstitute.org (remove spaces). We will provide your name and email address to those interested; however, you are responsible for making your own payment and accommodation arrangements.

For more information, please contact Mari Cochran at 617.680.0808.

Conference Organization:

The conference is divided into four parts; each part will concentrate on a single topic:

The conference format will focus on four key topic areas presented first by a panel in a plenary session, followed by facilitated workgroups comprised of a panel of speakers to address and explore each aspect of the topic in greater depth. It is our desire that this “open dialogue” format involving over 75 adoption professionals will be the cornerstone to compiling recommendations for a concrete action plan to be presented following the conference.

Plenary Topics include:

• Accountability to Families of Origin
  
• Accountability to Children and Adopted Adults
  
• Accountability to Prospective and Current Adoptive Families
  
• Summary: Regulation, Protection, and Ethical Practice

For additional information on the subtopics covered in the "open dialogue" workshops in the first two plenary topics, go to Adoption Ethics and Accountability Conference, Schedule for October 16, 2007.

For additional information on the subtopics covered in the "open dialogue" workshops for the last two plenary topics, go to Adoption Ethics and Accountability Conference, Schedule for October 15, 2007.

For a list of conference speakers, go to Adoption Ethics and Accountability Conference, Speakers

Conference organizers would like YOUR INPUT in the form of your participation in the conference. Remember, this conference is not just a sit and listen to someone else's ideas conference, but a listen, contribute, converse, and dialogue conference. Organizers are not looking for passive bodies to fill chairs, but active and involved participatants, whether they are speakers or attendees. Speakers will speak and listen. And attendees will listen and speak. This conference promises to be one that helps everyone grow and learn and expand their minds and broaden their knowledge base.

We here at Fleasbiting would love to see and meet you there and hear YOUR ideas.

"Ya'll come now, ya hear?"

For more information and to read more about the conference, click on any of the badges on this blog page.

Desiree

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Petition for Adoptee Rights

As follow-up to the earlier post on adoptee rights in India, here is a message from Arun Dohle, adult Indian adoptee:

Please sign the comments and circulate the link widely. We need a lot of signatures, so that CARA really considers our comments.

http://www.petitiononline.com/adoptee/petition.html

Basically CARA acknowledges that many of us Adoptees do want to search for Roots and specifically open the records.

But sadly they explicitly close the records in case of children born to unwed mothers.

Practically that means many of us- if not most- are effectively stonewalled from any search and prevented from knowing our original identity.

However since there is a chance of our voices being considered, before that comes into effect, let´s all try our best to achieve positive change.

Since the comments have become a bit long, here the three main points summarised.

a) Birthrecords: that Adoptees, do also get an original BirthCertificate, with the names of their biological parents

b) Right to access to our files and records, even in case of childrenborn to unwed mothers

c) Support and Setting up of independent Post Adoption Services

Thanks for your support!

Warm regards
Arun Dohle
www.people.freenet.de/connectedindianroots

On Dandelions and Thorns by a Flea

Several hundred Korean adoptees met for the fourth International Korean Adoptee Association Gathering was recently held in Korea. Coinciding with the Gathering is a petition drive to collection 1 million signatures calling for an end to international adoption in favor of better solutions for single mothers.

What’s unusual about this petition drive is that it was launched by a group of mothers whose children were adopted abroad.

The mothers call their group Mindeuelae – Dandelions – as in dandelions whose seeds may have been blown far away, but who won’t be done away with.

Their children who return as grown adults, “a thorn piercing Korea’s conscience,” says this editorial.

I appreciated this quote by Jae Ran Kim who joined the Dandelions in protest:

It is not a matter of whether you had a good experience or bad experience as an adoptee. The adoption system goes way beyond that. It works within a political, institutional structure of society.

This sentiment is very similar to differentiating between individual acts of racism and the deeply entrenched, yet more difficult to identify aspects of institutional racism. It’s the need to recognize that problems in adoption do not rest in how “successful” an individual’s adoption is, but that the problems are part of a larger system that trades children for dollars, favors the wealthy over the poor and preys upon the vulnerable.

Jane Jeong Trenka was a leading organizer of the protest and has a moving video about the Dandelion group on her blog.

May this event of the Dandelion mothers signal the door opening to the voices of mothers the world over.

Usha

Adoptee seeks end to overseas adoption, JoongAng Daily, August 4, 2007

Jane’s Blog, Korean birthparents against intl adoption, August 6, 2007

[Editorial] Stop intercountry adoption, The Hankyoreh, August 4, 2007

Korean adoptees from abroad and birth mothers protest overseas adoption, Yonhap News Agency, August 5, 2007

Stop Exploitation Now

I intend that this blog be, not simply a repository of information about adoption corruption, but also a place that highlights the efforts of fellow fleas who are concretely making a positive difference in the world.

Item 9 of my "What To Do About Adoption Corruption" summary list says, "Find ways to make a difference in terms of the root causes of the "need" for adoption."

Specifically, two of the ways I suggest this can be done follow:

--Find ways to address the contextual root causes of relinquishment, abandonment, and the questionable or illegal sourcing of children in these countries. This could be through sponsoring a family, sponsoring a child, supporting education, supporting an organization that offers education, supporting an organization that empowers local women, or whatever... It could be through urging your government or charities to address issues that you've become aware of; it could be through education of others as to the complexities of issues within countries, or many other things--whatever.

--Realistically speaking, international adoption touches only a tiny fraction of the children who have been separated (for whatever reason) from their family of origin. It will never be a solution for all children or even a sizable portion of the children in any given country. Supporting other in-country solutions for both children who are vulnerable to separation from families of origin (family preservation/prevention strategies) and who have already been separated from their families of origin (solutions other than IA) makes compassionate humanitarian sense.

I recently received an email from an adoptive mother who has combined resources with others and has been doing what she can, in her way with her interests and talents, to address some of the issues of vulnerable children in Cambodia. The result is an organization called Stop Exploitation Now.

According to their website:

Stop Exploitation Now! (SEN) was established to stop the exploitation, abuse, and neglect of women, children, and the disabled in developing countries. We also provide basic support such as food, shelter, healthcare, and educational opportunities to impoverished individuals in Southeast Asia. Our goal is to implement projects that have major and lasting impacts on the lives of those in need.

“Thou shalt not be a victim.
Thou shalt not be a perpetrator. Above all, thou shalt not be a bystander.”

~ Holocaust Museum, Washington DC

Stop Exploitation Now currently has at least four areas of intervention/assistance:

• anti-trafficking


• basic needs support


• development grants


• acid burn victim support

Please take the time to check out Stop Exploitation Now's website (great website and some really beautiful photos)

Stop Exploitation Now!

Desiree

Please note: It is the reader's responsibility to vet an organization before contributing to it. Highlighting it here does not necessarily constitute an endorsement. One place that non-profits can be vetted financially is at GuideStar.org, Connecting People with Non-Profit Information

Conor Grennan and Next Generation Nepal

In one of my detailed items under "What To Do About Corruption," I talked about how each of us needs to find a way to apply our own unique talents and interests to making a difference in the lives of vulnerable children and their families.

This entry is about one man who has been doing just that. Conor Grennan, not sure what to do with his life and wanting to do something cool, decided to travel--travel around the world. Apparently he didn't make it--around the world that is. But he is doing something cool and important. He got stuck in Nepal working with children in an orphanage. Then that work kinda evolved into something else. A mission to learn the truth about where these trafficked children--who eventually landed up in an orphanage--came from and how they came to be separated from their parents. He wanted the whole story.

And so, Conor's current work.

Backed by a small NGO he created called Next Generation Nepal, Conor has walked mountainous backroads into remote villages looking for the families of 24 children who were allegedly trafficked.

Carrying his own food, accompanied by a small party of translators and guides, and armed with photos of the children whose first parents he is seeking, Conor is having quite an adventure. And he is writing about his adventures, but more importantly, his work--the truth he finds--in his incredible blog.

Here is an exerpt from Conor's blog. Click on the link below the quote to go to Conor's actual blog.

The purpose of going was to trek through the mountains with photos of the children and any information we had – usually limited to a village name and the name of a father – and try to find the families of children taken by traffickers years ago. It would be the first step in a long process of reuniting children with their parents.

(By the way - this is a long entry, in case you’ve got stuff you need to be doing.)

The three-week search was both extremely difficult and extremely successful. Believe it or not, of the 24 children we knew who had parents somewhere in the mountains of Humla, we found 24 families. Crazy. It was substantially higher than my original estimate of finding zero families. I just didn’t know how we would be able to do it. My four-man team and the four-man team of my colleague, DB, who had profiles of many more children for a separate organization with the same mission, ended up traveling a large team. Together we were eight: seven men from Humla plus me...

Twenty four families. That means twenty four times, I sat with Rinjin, my translator, on a rough carpet outside a simple mud home in some small mountain village and handed a mother or a father a photo of their child who they haven’t seen in years. Then I simply watched their faces. It was instant recognition. If it was a mother, she would touch the photograph to her forehead, treating it as a sacred thing, then just stare at her son or daughter in the photo. I waited long minutes before intruding on these moments, the hypnotized smiles or the flood of tears or chattering with the crowd of villagers gathered around for what they sensed was a historic event, and then very carefully ask them if they knew where their child was. Very few had any idea.

Those moments were nothing short of astonishing. For me, it would begin even a few minutes earlier, when I would see the parents walking towards me through the village. They knew I was here – everybody in the village knew I was there, they gathered on low rooftops to watch our team approaching – but there was uncertainly as to what this white guy was doing in a place like this.

He was amazing, Min Bahadur – tall and lanky for a Nepali, always cheerful, exceedingly strong, and sure enough, he knew everybody we passed on the trail. So it was never a surprise to see him walking towards me with a mother and father following him, with a proud smile on his face. He would say something to Rinjin (my equally excellent translator), and Rinjin would turn to me and say “This is the father and mother of Chandra.” But I would know it already – the resemblance was uncanny, it was always uncanny. This was Chandra’s father and mother, Chandra grew up here, he was a baby at one point then learned to walk and to talk with these two people, in this village, around these animals and these fields and on the floors of these mud houses. Then they lost him. To see his real parents with my own eyes, the two people who were meant to be caring for him the way that we had been trying to do for two or three years, was quite honestly like a miracle.

We all had a lot of questions for each other, but I asked mine first. I asked the whole story of what happened with their child as far as they knew, what they had heard, when was the last time they had news about him or her. I asked what the traffickers had promised (it was always the same – to put the child in a boarding school in Kathmandu) and how much money they had charged the parents for this service. That was heartbreaking, hearing how much they had paid these bastards, how much they’d had to borrow, what they had to sell, seeing how incredibly poor they were. Typically, they may have heard from the trafficker soon after giving up their child before being cut off completely. The trafficker would always tell them that their child was in boarding school and was doing great, at the very same moment that I was finding this same child somewhere on the street half starved to death. It’s sick.

I asked about their families, their brothers, sisters, aunts, uncles. I asked about their economic conditions, how much land they had, how many animals, everything to get a sense of their financial security, how poor they were. The easy answer was “very poor” but there is more to it than that – all of Nepal is very poor, after all. We want to get a sense of how to allow children to safely come back to their families.

Connar's incredible blog:
How Connar is Spending All His Money: A BootsnAll Travel Blog

Now these particular children had not (yet) been adopted out, but their stories are important for understanding how children--some of whom are trafficked for adoption and some of whom are adopted out after being trafficked and landing in an orphanage come to be separated from parents and to be presented as "orphans"--kids who are or seem to be without parents who care for them. Starting to understand the vulnerabilities of these families and their children is the beginning step to understanding how adoption corruption works in impoverished countries.

Please also check out Conor's organization: Next Generation Nepal. Incidentally, his organization operates entirely on donations. And those donations are what allows Conor to do his work in Nepal.

Hats off to fellow fleas, Conor and Next Generation Nepal.

Desiree

Chuck Norris on Child Trafficking

As a part of the commemoration of the 200th anniversary of the abolition of slavery in Great Britain, Chuck Norris is dedicating the month of March in his on-line commentary to "addressing different aspects of the modern slave trade." Today, on Monday, March 12, 2007, he discusses "Child Trafficking Disguised as Adoption."

Chuck Norris says:

What many people don't know is that it is relatively easy for traffickers to abduct children, as they often allured from poverty, troubled families, or the lack of parental care. Even in cases where parents are present, traffickers often sway them by promising a better life, education, and future for their child(ren). Some parents are economically pressured to sell one child just to feed the rest of their family...

...Of all the ways children are trafficked, however, one of the most undetected remains through international adoption, which has been on the rise for years, from 6,472 in 1992 to 22,728 in 2005 in the US alone.

While parents around the globe are presented with opportunities to rescue orphans from impoverished backgrounds, many adoptions are inadvertently masking and perpetuating the dark world of child trafficking. Prospective parents must beware that just because visas are issued doesn't mean the child is not a victim of the adoptive market. Child trafficking is not just a sexual and labor trade--it's pro-adoption too!

Read all of Chuck Norris' commentary of March 12, 2007 here:
Child trafficking disguised as adoption

Thanks, Chuck, for speaking out. As more of us do so, it will become easier to combat child trafficking disguised as adoption.

Desiree