2010 Short Term Volunteer Trip--November 6-16

Have you ever wanted to volunteer at an orphanage or to take a "vacation with a purpose?"

Susan Poisson-Dollar, AAI's Director of Development, will be leading a short-term volunteer trip to Layla House in Ethiopia from November 6-16th, 2010 for a maximum of 12 participants.  The total cost for the trip is $2600 and includes airfaire from Washington, DC, aiport pick-up in Addis, lodging (single occupancy, discount for sharing), transportation and some meals in Addis.  Depending on the interests of the group, either a day or overnight excursion outside of Addis will be arranged and the travel agent we are working with can also help organize add-on tours to other parts of Ethiopia.   

Participants will be expected to travel together to Ethiopia to receive the discounted flight but return flights can be arranged individually.   All participants will be expected to get a criminal background check prior to the trip.  Please contact Susan Poisson-Dollar  for more details or to reserve your spot on the trip.   

Our staff in Ethiopia is coming up with lots of project ideas including a number of repair and small-scale construction needs for volunteers who have those skills.   There will also be opportunities to tutor children, teach English, work at our facility for developmentally-delayed children (Opportunity House), and accompany social workers on family visits.  Excursions will include trips to shop for fairly-traded handicrafts and a dinner at a cultural restaurant featuring traditional dance and food.  

Layla House Field Trip

Although Layla House is a happy place, the kids definitely enjoy getting out and doing something different! One of the most popular activities is a trip to one of the hotel pools followed by a treat such as ice cream or pizza. A generous young donor recently sponsored this field trip for a school group from Layla. Ivy Dash, our Layla Compound manager, went along and took these great photos of happy kids! 

The Fabulous Frieds in NJ

Randi and Justin Fried have adopted three siblings from Ethiopia with AAI.  They live in New Jersey and this article about their family's experience appeared in their local paper. Copied by permission of the author. 

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Family comes in all colors 

and ages in the Fried family, and love unites

written by Michelle Cadeau 

Family Facts
Name: The Fried Family
Country of origin: the United States and Ethiopia
Language: English and Amharic
Family: Justin and Randi Fried Desalegne, 17, 10th ; Rebka, 11, fourth­ grade; Chloe, 9, third grade; Hana, 6, first grade; and  Kyle, 6, kinder­garten

Outside of one West Orange house towers two flags, the Ameri­can and the Ethiopian. The family you are about to meet is not your regular “We are the World” family; actually it is not your regular fami­ly on any level. As I walk in, I see three minivans parked in the park­ing lot. Inside the Fried’s house­hold, Judaism and Orthodox Chris­tianity share space, Scandinavian, African and American blood ties blend and disabilities and sports all live together under one big roof.

There are people in this world who make a difference. Justin and Randi Fried are two of those. Their choices, a tad of faith and a big heap of love have created a family that is totally out of the box. In order to present the family, we have to start from the very beginning.

Randi grew up in the Heights area of West Orange and went off to college and met a man who is orig­inally from Long Island. Fast for­warding a bit, the two got married, wanted to start a family and chose West Orange as the place to be.

“We moved to town to be near family and friends. We opted to raise our family here because of the diversity and sense of community,” Randi said as we are sitting at the big kitchen island in their big house. While Randi and Justin tell me their story, the three younger children, Kyle, Chloe and Hana, play around in the living room, 11­year-old Rebka, is listening to us and 17- year-old Desalegne (Des) is somewhere else in the big house.

All the children but Kyle were adopted. Chloe was the first child to grace the family. Chloe, today, is 9 years old and has Downs syn­drome. The Fried couple was look­ing into starting a family and Justin, who works as a dentist, had had the privilege of working with some developmentally disabled patients. A single inquiring phone call about the options available to them domestically adopting an infant with special needs led to an unex­pected opportunity many months later. The organization called to ask if they would be interested in adopting a baby girl with Down syndrome. The Frieds quickly start­ed a process which would change their lives forever.

 

Four years later, Kyle, 6, was born into the family. After Kyle, arrived, Randi and Justin began to think about the distant future. Believing there is safety and joy in numbers, they decided the family would be great if the children had an older sister. After considering the best fit, they decided to adopt from Ethiopia. They have a hard time pin-pointing the reason they felt drawn to adopt from Africa, but it was not a decision made lightly. They thought about the impact on the new child since she would be different from them. They feared a child with brown skin, in a white Jewish family of four, would be a significant struggle for all. They stretched their minds and their intentions just a little bit farther and decided to adopt two siblings, thereby the new additions would have a family member to whom they could relate.

In November of 2005, they received a call about two sisters, Rebka, 6 and Hana, 2. The sisters became orphans in Ethiopia after the death of their parents and were moved to a children’s home in Addis Ababa. Almost instantly, the Frieds knew they were meant to give the girls a family once again.

Randi and Justin wrote letters and sent pictures of their family to Rebka and Hana introducing them­selves. In March of 2006, the Frieds made a very important trip — not only was it the first trip out­side of the United States for both of them, but also a trip to bring home the rest of their family, a trip of a lifetime in so many ways and on so many levels.

How do you feel going to pick up a child in a different country, a child that doesn’t speak your lan­guage, a child you have never met? Many times during our interview, Randi gets up and chooses specific pictures from the wall. To answer this question, she brings me a pic­ture of her on the steps to the orphanage with the two young girls. It is an emotional picture which speaks more than that thou­sand words. The picture shows three people, total strangers that already legally are a family. It shows the differences between the three, not only the obvious as the color of their skin but the difference in their clothes, their everyday life, their lifestyle … almost in every­thing. The picture shows three peo­ple’s first groping attempt to under­stand what this moment would mean to all of them.

Rebka, 6 years old at the time, takes the role of the protector and tries to help her sister through her fear.

“Hana would see white people come and visit with her friends (in the orphanage) and then the friend would be gone. She didn’t under­stand where her friends went. She was scared to have to leave her home again,” Rebka explained.

It is time for Justin and Randi to take the girls home to their new home in the United States. The agency arranges a meeting so that the children’s relatives, if there are any, can come to say good- bye right before the children leave for their new life. At the meeting, Hana’s and Rebka’s older brother and a neighbor are there.

Justin tells me about the sur­prise: “We had known that there was an older brother but we thought he was a grown person. When we met him, it turned out he was 13 years old.” It was a very emotional meeting. The Frieds were told it had been decided it was best for Desalegne to stay with the neighbor in Addis Ababa.

The Fried’s travelled back home to West Orange to start their new life with their new children. They can’t stop thinking about Desaleg­ne and Rebka and Hana would talk often about him, too. Randi and Justin just couldn’t leave Des with­out any help. Through West Orange Ethiopian- American friends and their adoption agency, they set it up so that Des could attend school in Ethiopia and so that he was taken care of. Justin went back to Ethiopia for some volunteer work and took the opportunity to speak more with Des. They were wonder­ing if they could stretch once again to include Desalegne in their home. Randi and Justin wanted Des to be involved in the choice and asked him if he wanted to become a part of their family in the United States where he would be reunited with his sisters. Without hesitation, Des said that was exactly what he want­ed. All people involved knew that this would not be an easy task for them to adjust and make it work as a family, but they were willing to make the effort.

The process took some time but, two years after his sisters were here, Des joined the family in West Orange. When he, as a 15-year-old, came to his new home and met his sisters, it dawned on Randi how hard this would be.

“He walked in and saw his sis­ters. They no longer speak Amharic fluently and Des didn’t speak Eng­lish.” The obstacle of geography was overcome, but the road to real­ly re-uniting and healing is long.

Des, who got here in January 2008, got assimilated with the help of an adult ESL program and the life saver — soccer! By August, he earned a spot on the high school junior varsity team.

“ Desalegne blossomed in school. He was placed in a self­contained ESL program and bond­ed with the students there, but the soccer team was a bridge Justin remembers.

The “other sport” chosen ended up being wrestling, a sport that Des had no knowledge of. He put his all into it and, even though he had to learn the sport from scratch and his English still was limited, at the end of his freshman year, he earned his varsity letter.

“He was told to grab the other guy’s ankle and he didn’t even know the English word for ankle yet. He really had to work hard, but he wouldn’t give up. What kept him going was that he really bonded with the coaches and his team­mates. He refers to them as his brothers.”

In order to get the children to adapt to America, the Fried family has created a haven for them. The family has many close Ethiopian friends. They are especially close with a man named Beniam (Ben) Bekele and his family. Their friends helped them with everything from translating in the early months to teaching Randi and Justin how to cook Ethiopian food. The Fried family regularly attends the Ethiopian Orthodox church in town and one of their young friends there, a Roosevelt student, helps out by braiding Rebka’s hair.

Des, today, is a young man with a showcase full of trophies, every­one well-earned and a testimony to his great success in his new coun­try. He is no longer in an all-day ESL program but takes some ESL classes and some regular ones at the high school. He is quiet and gives a shy impression but the pic­tures his mom shows me bear wit­ness about him being different when he feels comfortable.

Hana and Rebka are two won­derful girls, seemingly as American as can be, but very proud of their heritage. They show me all the Ethiopian artifacts in the house and explain what they are for. Chloe is a happy, talkative 9-year-old who loves everyone. If you are close to Chloe, you are bound to get a hug or two. Kyle is a warm and giving brother to the whole bunch. If it was not for the obvious, such as the color of their skin, you would not have guessed that this is a self­assembled family. Justin and Randi are extremely involved in anything their children do. Their determination to go to any length to make their family work and be happy is apparent all over the house. Rebka shows me a traditional hand-woven basket table called a Mesob in the living room; on my way to my car, we go through the basement and there is a wrestling/ tumbling room for the kids. The minivans in the parking lot are used not only to shuttle the children to their activities, but also to make sure all the kids, not just the Fried children, will be picked up and taken to wrestling practice or tournaments or wherever they need to go.

On my way from the Fried house, I realized that, if more peo­ple were like Randi and Justin, this world would be a much better place. I am sure that four adopted children, the WOHS wrestling team, all the people that know them and all the teachers and educators that have come in contact with this family will second that. Thank you Fried's, all seven of you, for show­ing us what is important in life and for choosing our community as part of your life.

Changes to AAI's Ghana program

 Anita Gillispie, AAI's Ghana Coordinator

giving out a welcome bag from this child's new adoptive parents

Post submitted by Anita Gillispie with photos from her recent trip to Ghana
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AAI established its Ghana program in April 2007 and has united over 60 children with adoptive families since that time. Although the program is small, we have one of the most active and respected Ghana programsin existence today. As Ghana adoptions become a more popular optionfor adoptive families, the authorities in Ghana have taken a hard look at the positives and negatives of the rising numbers. As a result, the program has undergone significant changes in the last few months.  I feel that the changes will, in the end, make for a more transparent adoption process.

meeting adoptive parents for the first time

In the future, one or both parents (depending on the region) will travel to Ghana in order to attend court. After court most families will then wait for the adoption decree to be issued and file immigration paperwork at the US Embassy before heading home. This "first trip" will usually take 2-3 weeks. During this trip parents will have a chance to experience the region of their child's birth and, in most cases, meet biological family members. As a result of this first trip families will have a much deeper understanding of the culture from which their children come.


We expect "2-year Interim Orders" to become more common in this program. Ghana sees a 2-year interim order as a full adoption for two years, but US authorities interpret this decree more like a guardianship. There are other countries (including Thailand) that give guardianship for a certain time-frame until a final order is issued, so this is not unknown in the world of adoption. After the two year interim period, a post adoption report is sent to Ghana. The report is submitted to the courts, which then issue a Full and Final Adoption Decree. Families need not travel back to Ghana at the end of the two years. Within the 2 year interim period most states will allow the adoption to be finalized in the child's home state.






The visa process for adopted children changed as of April 7th. Birth family members will be called into the embassy for interviews. AAI is extremely supportive of the new measures, in fact asking the embassy to consider new procedures that would prevent corruption in adoptions. Interviewing birth families will insure that the family understands what adoption is (permanent) and what it isn't (a long-term sponsorship). The consulate will further be able to verify that birth family members are who they say they are. In some cases DNA matching may be requested by the embassy. While these procedures add time to the over-all process, they also add peace of mind to adoptive families. Families will know without a shadow of a doubt that their children came to them out of true need for an adoptive family.

Lastly, as of April 1st Eban House closed its doors. Eban House was our children's home in Ghana, established in June 2007. Eban House was a safe haven for all of the children adopted through our program, and many who were able to be reunited with their biological families. However, Social Welfare made it clear to us recently that they do not want adoption agencies intimately involved in the running of a children's home (or large group foster home). Out of respect for the proper authorities in Ghana, we made the difficult decision to close Eban's door. Despite this loss of a dream, the closure of Eban House also means that we have new opportunities within Ghana to assist with family preservation. More adoption fees will now go towards projects that will keep families together. Children adopted through our program in the future will either live in small private foster homes or in their "home" orphanage.



Despite these changes to the program we are excited for the future! Ghana continues to be a wonderful option for families hoping to adopt children (single or sibling sets) ages 3 years and older. Families with 5 or fewer children qualify to adopt, as well as some larger families on a (very) case by case basis. Generally parents must be under 50 years to adopt, but when adopting much older or special needs children exceptions may be made. The process from referral to homecoming is generally 6-8 months. We are a very small program, which makes for intimate relationships between our adoptive families.  Our Ghana families are a tight-knit group that often make lifelong friendships during the adoption process!

For more information about AAI's Ghana program, please write to me at anita@adoptionadvocates.org. I look forward to hearing from you!

Anita Gillispie
AAI Ghana Program Coordinator

An AAI family returns to Ethiopia

 The Littles

bottom from left --Brooke, Mitiku and Beshir

top row--Marta, Chris and Bob

Bob and Chris Little of Port Townsend, Washington have 14 children, nine of whom are adopted and six of those are from Ethiopia.  They have the distinction of adopting children from each of the 4 Layla House locations.  In March, they returned with five of their six Ethiopians for a month long visit which included searches for relatives, volunteering at Layla House, and just being tourists.  Their local paper, The Port Townsend Leader, just did a feature on their trip and we've made it available at this link. 

Brooke and Marta Little being greeted by their brother at the airport

The family with Marta and Brooke's sisters celebrating Ethiopian Easter