Year-End Reports from Children's Hope
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What a blessed year for Children's Hope International! In 2002, we saw 670 children coming home from six countries and many, many children being helped by our humanitarian aid programs. We want to congratulate to all our 2002 new CHI families on their adoptions and new family member. We wish our nearly 4000 families a best new year of 2003! CHINA In 2002, CCAA instituted a quota, which limited the number of dossiers that we were able to submit and the number of single prospective parents. We completed 2002’s quota, and we were very thankful in late November when we heard that there will be no quota in 2003 for couples adopting from China and that they were raising the single quota from 5% based on the previous 3 years to 8% of future dossiers. This means the China program can grow and meet the needs of the children. This year the China program will have completed 290 adoptions, and 15% of the adoptions were from the Waiting Child Program. What a wonderful way to start the New Year! China humanitarian programs have grown much bigger now. There is a separate Foundation team in our inside China office, where most of projects are handled. The Foundation is also a part of China Association of Social work which gives us much access to China’s child welfare system. Through CHI foundation, three Hope Centers are being built to receive abandoned children in Yun Nan province. We continued our Foster Care Program, in Xin Jiang and Guang Dong region. Many small projects to help the orphanages were completed all through the year. Our main focus of the year was the medical project called “Give Me New Life.” It is a continuation of the Medical Team Project 2000. For the last three years, 100 children received surgeries each year through this project. For 2002, the number will be greater than 100 because in November we took on the challenge of helping 22 more children who needed heart surgery. The most exciting news for our humanitarian program this year was our outreach to local Chinese people. We fund raised inside China! The best hospitals in Beijing provided free surgery to 16 children. RUSSIA The Russia program has grown by leaps and bounds in 2002! We will complete 239 adoptions this year, up from 144 last year! It was just announced by the Russian Federation that CHI is the third largest agency in numbers of children placed this year. Our program is reaccredited in Russia for another year and we have now begun our CHI Russia Foundation to help coordinate all our humanitarian aid within Russia. The amount of $277,939 (compared to $173,299 from 2001) was given in humanitarian aid this year for 182 projects throughout Russia, such as improving the conditions for children at many orphanages and for such special projects as: organizing an international (USA, China, Russia) conference for social workers in Tver about developing a foster care system in Russia; starting a newspaper called “Russian Hearts” in Vladivostok and “Operation Mother, Find Me” in Novosibirsk for promoting domestic adoptions within Russia and other small projects to help particular orphanages and regional needs. We look forward to the new year and all the Russian children and families we'll be able to help in so many wonderful ways! GUATEMALA The year 2002 has been an exciting one for CHI’s Guatemala program. It has been a year of much transition and growth. During this period of transition, the Guatemala program began experiencing unprecedented growth due to China’s adoption quotas. In response to program growth and in preparation for the possible implementation of the Hague Convention on Intercountry Adoption in Guatemala, several new attorneys, along with a few new orphanages, have been added to our contact list. A program coordinator in Guatemala, Myriam Coronado, has also been added to assist families during their travel in Guatemala and to coordinate CHI’s humanitarian aid efforts in Guatemala. In September, Alicia traveled to Guatemala to interview new contacts and to observe the Guatemalan adoptions process firsthand. In November, Dwyatt and Alicia returned to Guatemala to visit new orphanages and to meet with Guatemala contacts. We are very excited about these new contacts and have been most impressed with their work thus far. In the year 2002, CHI completed 79 adoptions from Guatemala, there are 74 families with referrals, 51 with completed dossiers waiting for referrals, and over 100 families in the dossier preparation stage. In the coming year, we look forward to increasing the number of placements of older and special needs children and to expanding the scope of our humanitarian aid work in Guatemala. VIETNAM This year in the Vietnam program, 46 children were united with their forever families, which is the exact same number of adoptions that we did last year. Out of the 46 children that came home, 15 of those children were waiting children or special needs children, which makes up 32% of all adoptions in Vietnam this year. We are delighted to have helped so many children that are in need of a home. This year we were able to donate over $100,000 in humanitarian aid to different projects in Vietnam. Some of the projects that we completed this year were: offering training classes for students in motorbike repair and electrical engineering; sending handicapped children to Hanoi to participate in an annual conference of handicapped children; sponsoring physical therapy for the orphanage children; providing vocational training and staff development for orphanage staff, as well as buying food and formula for orphaned children. Our main focus this year was the children affected by HIV We were able to donate medicine to many of the children that are living in the orphanages with HIV or AIDS, as well as purchase 100 beds for the new HIV center that opened December 1st, 2002 in Ho Chi Minh City. This new center will help the increasing number of children that are testing positive for HIV at birth. Next year we hope to be involved further in helping this center with education, medicine and eventually placing many of the children that later test negative for HIV and do not actually have HIV or AIDS. INDIA In 2002, fourteen families brought home children from Delhi and Pune, India. The children ranged in age from 18 months to six years. We expect many more children will come home in 2003. We are now working with more agencies in more areas of India and receiving more referrals. In recent times India seems to really want to place their children in Indian families in India or abroad, and many more Indians are wanting to adopt. Most Indians want young, healthy babies, which means the children available to non-Indians are going to be 2 years and up, sibling groups, special needs. Our outreach to India’s many needy continues and grows with each passing year. This year we were able to put in a number of village wells to enable the villagers to have safe, clean water. Help was also directed to provide sewing machines and rickshaws to enable poor families to have employment and be self-sufficient, thus ending their need to abandon their children. We are truly ending the cycle of poverty and making a massive difference for thousands through these projects. In 2003, we are hoping to assist in new outreach into one of India’s poorest and most backward states - Orissa.
COLOMBIA Our new Colombia program is off to a great start in 2002, with eight children arriving home before the end of the year and another nine children assigned to CHI families who will arrive home in the first part of the new year. We have 35 families either with dossiers already in Colombia awaiting assignment or currently working on their dossiers. Many of our families are hoping to adopt pre-schoolers, older children or sibling groups, while others are waiting for infants and children under 3. The families who have traveled have come home with wonderful stories about their time in Colombia. Our representative in Colombia takes good care of them, as does the staff of the bed and breakfast where the families stay. The children have been well prepared for their families and are all adjusting even better than anticipated. The biggest challenge, as usual, is the language barrier and is a great reason for Colombia adoptive families to learn Spanish while they are awaiting their assignment! This is an exciting program that will be a long-term program for CHI. Adoptions in Colombia have been well organized and stable for over 20 years, and it is an honor and a privilege to help place some of these beautiful children. We anticipate lots of growth in 2003 and a steady stream of children starting to come home.
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