Groups Doing Great Work for China's Orphans

Jenny Bowen, resident of Beijing and adoptive mom to two girls from China, and also Executive Director of Half the Sky Foundation, will be the only American carrying the Olympic Torch to Beijing for the 2008 Summer Olympics. Read more about Jenny here.

The Foundation she runs, Half the Sky Foundation, is a wonderful organization that supports children living in China's Social Welfare Institutions (SWIs house orphans and sometimes also the elderly). Their programs provide nannies to children living in SWIs to encourage healthy development and bonding, educational programs for older children, and group homes for special needs children that cannot be adopted.

Another great group we've learned about through our wait is called A Child's Right. This NFP group was started by adoptive parents and other professionals to bring clean drinking water to children living in SWIs in China and in undeveloped countries around the world. The group sets up very simple filter systems inside the institutions, so that beginning in infancy, the children can have water purified of parasites and other organisms.

The same agency that runs China's adoption program, the CCAA, also sponsors a charitable program to help it's institutionalized children. The Tomorrow Plan raises funds to pay for surgical procedures to repair minor birth defects, including heart problems. The program receives funds from several NFP profit organizations created by American families who have adopted from China.

Look at All Those Kids!!!

We are delighted to tell you that the latest set of referrals are coming in, and include families whose documents were logged in at the China Center of Adoption Affairs up to and including December 8, 2005. These families have waited for close to two years to see their children's faces, some for even longer, especially the single moms.

Congratulations to all the new parents, seeing their kids' faces for the first time!

Links to some of the happy families can be found on the Rumor Queen's site (or China Adopt Talk).

We are especially delighted because this in all likelihood means...WE ARE NEXT!. Our LID is December 12, 2005. We expect, then, to receive our own referral during the first week of December. Almost 24 months after our documents were logged in! So, let's start the ticker....

Guangzhou, here we come...