Warm Beach Schedule Again!

We're looking forward to seeing everyone on Friday at Warm Beach. The festivities start at 4pm. Here's the schedule again if you missed the first blog post about it:

Schedule for AAI Family Gathering 2009

FRIDAY AFTERNOON

ARRIVAL and REGISTRATION 4pm - 5:30 (Please do not arrive before 4pm)
· Receive information packet with schedule and maps
· Put on name tags and blue wrist bands(adults only---please wear your wristband throughout the weekend so we can identify registered participants at meals and sessions)
· Sign up for Saturday morning discussion groups or hair braiding sessions
· Sign up to do something silly or serious for the Talent Show!
· Sign up for volunteer slots (set up and clean up for various sessions, helping with Silent Auction etc.) Please have 1 adult from your party sign up to help once during the weekend)

FRIDAY EVENING

• 5:30pm Dinner (all meals are in Cedar Lodge—meals are served family style, you are strongly encouraged to arrive on time)
• 
  6: 45pm Scavenger Hunt for kids hosted by Barb and Mike Patton (meet outside Program Center Auditorium)
• 
  7:45pm Campfire (Amphitheatre)
  

SATURDAY

ALL DAY---International Marketplace/ Silent Auction Bidding/Quilt Display and Raffle Ticket Sale in the Program Center Auditorium

SATURDAY MORNING

• 8 am Breakfast
  
• 10am —11:45 Informal Hair Braiding Sessions with the Hehn and Little expert hairdressers, meet at Program Center Auditorium (feel free to bring along a model with loose hair! The girls will share their favorite products and put out a “tip” jar to help with expenses)
  
• 10am – 11:15 Adult Discussion Groups (locations TBA, check at Program Center Auditorium)
  Topics:
  · Large Family Issues/ Adult Adopted Children (Chris Little)
  · Behavior Issues – young children (Julie Hehn)
  · Behavior Issues—Older children (Gay Knutzen)
  · HIV+ adoption (Erin Henderson)
  · AAI Humanitarian Projects Present and Future, Fundraising ideas, Family Gatherings etc. (Susan Poisson-Dollar)
  · AAI Adoption Programs (all you ever wanted to know but were afraid to ask) , facilitated by Merrily and other AAI Staff including Temesgen Gebraselassie, our country representative in charge of our NGO in Ethiopia. Also Ebenezer Amartefio, Head of Social Welfare in Ghana will be in attendance.
  · Ethiopia Travel-Learn and Share (Susan Holmgren)
  
  SATURDAY AFTERNOON
  
• 12pm Lunch
  
• 1pm – 5:00 Open Swim at the Warm Beach Pool
  
• 1:30pm – 3:00 Ghanaian Drummers (Performance plus an informal workshop afterward)
  
• 3:30pm-4:15—Ethiopian Dance Workshop 1 (children under 10, parents too!) with Tizita Hatcher
  
• 4:30pm -5:15—Ethiopian Dance Workshop 2 (children over 10, parents too!)
  
• 5:30 Dinner
• 
  SATURDAY EVENING
  7:00 PM
  
• TALENT SHOW with TED RIPLEY as the Master of Ceremonies
• END OF SILENT AUCTION
• QUILT RAFFLE DRAWING
  
  SUNDAY
  8:00 AM – Breakfast
  
  9: 30 – ECUMENICAL SERVICE (in Program Amphitheatre, led by Mike Patton)
  
  11:00 – CHECKOUT TIME

Buy Buna and send a child to school!

Our Benefit Orphans Store contributed nearly $10,000 to AAI's Humanitarian Projects last year. We've recently added some new products and would like to highlight them here.


Now you can purchase delicious coffee---an Ethiopian fair trade and organic blend--and the profits will benefit our Sponsorship programs. The 12 oz. bags sell for $10 (less than fancy coffee from you-know-where) and they keep very well in the freezer so you can order several at once and save on the shipping. Make wonderful gifts as well for teachers and others that appreciate the idea of helping to keep orphaned children in school and with loving caregivers.





Another item for lovers of good buna would be the beautiful woodcut below. An AAI mom currently living in Addis Ababa is a woodcut artist and has donated a number of her Ethiopian-themed works to benefit Layla House. You can see more of them on the Benefit Orphans website at this link.

Another hot selling item on Benefit Orphans is the "Baby Ghabi"--the perfect gift for any new baby but particularly one from Ethiopia. It's a handwoven, super soft baby blanket that any new mom will find handy. Proceeds from the blankets benefit both AAI's Humanitarian projects and the small local business that provides much needed jobs and training for Ethiopian women.

Return to Ethiopia

AAI is currently in the planning stages of organizing a tour for older adoptees and their adoptive parents to return to Ethiopia for a combination of volunteer service at Layla House, adoption advocacy with government officials, and the opportunity so see family members and their homeland again. The tentative timing for the trip is late June 2010 and we will be posting more as plans firm up.

Imagine our delight when we received the following report of such a return visit! Dagmawi Dougherty is now 20 years old and he and his younger sister were adopted from Layla House in 2002. With two additional siblings, he and his family live in Massachusetts. Dagmawi's ambition is to study business in college and to create an enterprise someday that "connects Ethiopia and the United States on some level." Dagmawi did his return trip as part of a high school senior project and sent the report and photos below to Merrily.

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Going Back Home

When I first heard about senior projects, I thought they were like internships or future jobs for kids to try out while they are in high school and see if they want to do it as a profession later on in their life. After I heard that anyone can propose an idea for a project and if the committee approves it, it can be done. That’s when the idea of going back to Ethiopia popped in my head. At first I just wanted to go back and see family but later on I figured out that it had to have a purpose so I thought of the idea of working at the orphanage that I lived in for a year. Then I asked my friend Drell if he would like to join and he agreed.

Going back home for the first time in seven years since I have been here made me a little nervous and just left me wondering how the country had changed and how my family would remember me. The only thing in my mind I knew that wouldn’t change much is the orphanage. Although I now have a whole new different perspective on being in the orphanage and being adopted, I wondered how the kids there see it and if I saw it the same when I was there. With all these thoughts and feelings going through my mind, we departed on this long trip in May 2009.

Once we got there, my Ethiopian family received us at the airport. It had been 8 years since I had last seen them. We all gave each other hugs and I introduced them to Drell, his mom, and my mom, although one of my aunts had already met my mom 7 ½ years ago when she came to see us while we were in the orphanage. We were very tired so we went straight to the hotel and crashed. The next day all four of us went over to the orphanage and when I saw the kids, that was the first time that it hit me I was once like them and now they’re looking at me like an American and wondering if I even speak their language. One thing I remember is walking into the crowd of kids and having one of the kids shout out B for Biruk pointing at my Boston Red Sox hat. It was clear that his name was Biruk and what was funny was that he didn’t even ask what the B stood for; he already had made up his mind it stood for Biruk. He asked to wear it and walked around showing other kids that the B on a Boston Red Sox hat apparently stood for Biruk.

Later on that night we had a huge dinner party at the Hilton with all of my existing family members. Some of them even came from over 60 miles away. We all sat around a table and I was assigned to sit next to my 70-year-old grandmother who was crying continuously at the airport the night before. She was very glad that I had returned and kept asking me where my sister was. I told everyone that I am a senior and that next year I will be going to college and Kal still has one more year left. We had a great time at dinner and I went around the table catching up with everyone in the family. I told them that I was there on a project and that I couldn’t spend all my time with them. I told them Drell and I were volunteering at the orphanage and they were very supportive of it.

That next Monday we started going to the orphanage at 9 in the morning till 6 at night. Throughout those five days, everything I knew about Ethiopia and the orphanage came back to me. It felt like I hadn’t even left the country. We played with the kids, taught them classes about America, and told them how America is in our own eyes. We listed every sport we could think of and told them how, where, and when it’s played. I even broke down the events in Track and Field and told them which ones I do and how many events there are. Also during our time there, I realized how much of a fool I was to stop playing soccer. Every single one of those kids reminded me of myself and how much I loved soccer. During every gym class they had, all they wanted to do was play soccer. We tried to teach them baseball but after about 10 minutes, they wanted to change the game and we asked them what they wanted to play and they all shouted soccer.

That Thursday, Drell and I got a chance to go and see AHOPE, an orphanage that is affiliated with Layla House and houses HIV+ kids. After learning from the book I read for this project, There Is No Me Without You by Melissa Fay Greene, I knew that HIV+ kids could also be adopted but that it is a little more difficult. It killed me to know that some of them have brothers and sisters that are negative at the other orphanages. One of the orphanages now for HIV+ kids is the same facility as the one where I was as an orphan. It was very personal and emotional for me to see the exact same place I lived for a year and now seven years later looking at it and not only seeing the place but seeing it filled with HIV+ kids. I think that was the most touching thing that happened to me during this trip.

It was nice to see family members and people that I haven’t for a long time but to be at this place alone without Drell or anyone I knew and just to take it all in and to see what I turned out to be 7 years later, really hit me and I appreciated that moment. I don’t think I will ever forget how it made me feel. Overall I learned a lot from this trip and I got to see and help kids that were once like me. It was also very nice to see family and friends. It made me realize how lucky I am to be adopted and to be living in America. Hopefully, from the slide show presentation I created, others will realize that life in America is heaven compared to how kids in other places in the word live and that it is sometimes good to go out and discover for yourself and experience it firsthand.

Pennies for Dessie

Wow, look what pennies can do! We received the following letter from Julie Barclay about her school district's recent efforts on behalf of AAI's Dessie's Dream project.
*************************************

A few months ago an article ran in our local newspaper about my Ethiopian adopted son, Noah. As a result, Dave Shoup, a teacher at Union High School in Vancouver, Washington contacted me and in a real small world moment, we found out that Noah and his two adopted Ethiopian sons are all from the same town in Northern Ethiopia, Dessie. They now live less than 5 miles away from each other.

Every year for one week Dave does a fundraiser, called Dessie's Dream, where he collects coins from the students of Union High to go toward constructing a school in Dessie. He asked if I might be interested in helping out this year with the coin drive by including the Hockinson School District. To be honest, when Dessie’s Dream was presented to me by Dave a few months back it seemed just that, a dream something to long for, to daydream about, to set one’s heart on…but really was it something attainable or… just a daydream.

The idea of a coin drive for a school half a world away seemed a daunting task. If you had asked any first grader at the beginning of the school year what a school in Dessie, Ethiopia would have in common with their 21st century classroom in Hockinson, Washington you would have been met with blank stares and silence. Dave made an amazing video putting into perspective the stark comparison between our “Hockinson World” and the world of a school child in Dessie. Wonderful teaching moments arose by all faculty and teachers dedicated to this cause throughout the Intermediate and Middle school students within the Hockinson School District. It would be safe to say within the past 20 days Dessie and Hockinson “touched” each other through compassion and knowledge.

At the Middle School, our retiring librarian Barbara Fritzler was trying to figure out what to do with her frog collection she had accumulated over the 17 years she occupied the Middle School Library. A raffle for her frogs seemed to be the perfect solution. All week her middle school students came in and purchased raffle tickets for their favorite frogs. At the end of the week a drawing was held. All proceeds of the raffle ticket sales went towards Dessie’s Dream…and Barbara was happy that all of her precious frogs found homes as well. Win-Win! Also, as a final good-bye to Barbara her staff collected money for a retirement gift. They decided more than anything Barbara would appreciate donating that money specifically to the library at the new school in Dessie, so a separate check was also sent in honor of Barbara Fritzler to help fill the library for the students in Ethiopia.

Katie Nedved, an Eighth grade teacher summed up the energy of the Dessie’s Dream event perfectly,

“My "tough guy" student in homebase showed his first glimpse of enthusiasm after watching the Dessie video...he proclaimed, "I'm bringing in $10!" I said, "You might win a lot of froggies with that contribution." He said, I don't need any frogs, I just want to do it to do it." (I thought to myself, can I have an instant replay on that please?!) Touched my heart...”


Today the final coins have been counted and it is with great pride that the children of Hockinson School District as well as all faculty and staff who participated at Hockinson Intermediate, Hockinson Middle School, and the Hockinson PWT that we present a check to Adoption Advocates International and the students and faculty associated with Dessie’s Dream in Dessie, Ethiopia for a grand total of $2258.37.

This experience has been nothing short of an honor to participate in. As one teacher put it, “Compassion is alive and well in Hockinson.” We are humbled by this opportunity and hope to continue a relationship in some capacity with this program in the future.

With great respect for all you do for the children of our world,

Julie Barclay

Warm Beach Schedule! Come and join us

Our 2009 Summer Gathering at Warm Beach Camp in Stanwood, WA is fast approaching. It is being held from Friday July 31-Sunday August 2. There are still campsites and limited lodging choices available. You MUST pre-register with Ky Patterson to attend---e-mail her at Ky@adoptionadvocates.org if you are interested. Day attendance is also a possiblity, but again pre-registration is required.

Here's the schedule we have devised. There is also plenty of time to explore the beautiful grounds, swim, play soccer and even use the ropes course and climbing wall there. The AAI staff is really looking forward to seeing everyone in just a couple of weeks!

Schedule for AAI Family Gathering 2009

ARRIVAL and REGISTRATION 4pm - 5:30 (Please do not arrive before 4pm)

· Receive information packet with schedule and maps
· Put on name tags (adults only---please wear throughout the weekend so we can identify registered participants)
· Sign up for Saturday morning discussion groups or hair braiding sessions
· Sign up to do something silly or serious for the Talent Show!
· Sign up for volunteer slots (set up and clean up for various sessions, helping with Silent Auction etc.) Please have 1 adult from your party sign up to help once during the weekend)

FRIDAY EVENING

5:30pm Dinner (all meals are in Cedar Lodge—meals are served family style, you are strongly encouraged to arrive on time)

7pm Scavenger Hunt for kids hosted by Barb and Mike Patton (meet outside Program Center Auditorium)

8:00pm Campfire and Marshmallow Roast (Amphitheatre)

SATURDAY

ALL DAY---International Marketplace/ Silent Auction Bidding/Quilt Display and Raffle Ticket Sale in the Program Center Auditorium

SATURDAY MORNING

8 am Breakfast

10am —11:45 Informal Hair Braiding Sessions with the Hehn and Little expert hairdressers, meet at Program Center Auditorium (feel free to bring along a model with loose hair! The girls will share their favorite products and put out a “tip” jar to help with expenses)

10am – 11:15 Adult Discussion Groups (locations TBA, check at Program Center Auditorium)
Topics:
· Large Family Issues/ Adult Adopted Children (Chris Little)
· Behavior Issues – young children (Julie Hehn)
· Behavior Issues—Older children (Gay Knutzen)
· HIV+ adoption (Erin Henderson)
· AAI Humanitarian Projects Present and Future, Fundraising ideas, Family Gatherings etc. (Susan Poisson-Dollar)
· AAI Adoption Programs (all you ever wanted to know but were afraid to ask) or (Merrily, and other AAI Staff including Temesgen)
· Transracial Family issues (Facilitator TBA)

SATURDAY AFTERNOON

12:oo pm Lunch

1:00pm--5:00 Open Swim at the Warm Beach Pool

1:30 – 3:00 Ghanaian Drummers (Performance plus an informal workshop afterward)

3:30-4:15—Ethiopian Dance Workshop 1 (children under 10, parents too!) with Tizita Hatcher

4:30-5:15—Ethiopian Dance Workshop 2 (children over 10, parents too!)

5:30 Dinner

SATURDAY EVENING

7:30 PM
· TALENT SHOW with TED RIPLEY as the Master of Ceremonies
· END OF SILENT AUCTION
· QUILT RAFFLE DRAWING

SUNDAY

8:00 AM – Breakfast

9: 30 – ECUMENICAL SERVICE (in Program Amphitheatre, led by Mike Patton)

11:00 – CHECKOUT TIME

AAI Sponsorship makes a difference in a student's life

Our AAI sponsorship coordinator, Brooke Cole, recently traveled to Ethiopia and carried many supplies to some of the children we support there. One of our sponsors wanted to send her sponsored child some textbooks he needed for school. In the latest issue of her newsletter Brooke relates the story below.



The Power of a Letter


For many children in the sponsorship program, nothing shows support like a letter from their sponsors. Some of the older children are orphaned, with no extended family and they tackle life’s everyday challenges completely alone. To receive a letter from someone on another continent helps these children to feel less isolated. For some, it gives them the inspiration to persevere and to continue with their educational goals.



Aseresahagn Geze is an older boy who has been in our sponsorship program since 2006. He lives alone in a small, mud-plastered house and has faced a lot of hardships in his life. Aseresahgn is presently in the 10th grade and will be taking the Ethiopian National Exam this year. This test will determine whether or not he gets into University. Aseresahgn hopes to be an agriculturist one day and has a strong passion for the sciences. Most recently his sponsor got in touch with me and asked if there was anything ‘extra’ she could do for him. I agreed on my next trip to take some small gifts for him and in the end she elected to purchase some science textbooks to help with his studies.



I forgot how heavy text books can be, and in my final days of getting ready for my trip, I found myself packing and unpacking my suitcases to make sure they were the proper weight. It was a struggle to decide what I needed to leave behind so I could get the text books to Aseresahagn. I’m so glad now that I decided to hand carry the lightest of the books, because when I came into the office one morning, I had a very uplifting email waiting for me. Miriam, one of our social workers. This is what Miriam wrote,



“I was able to meet Aseresahagn Geze last Monday and have delivered the books that were sent from his sponsoring family. He was very happy to have them. He told me that it will help him on his studies and so he is very happy. He has sent his warm thanks and greetings for the sponsoring family. Aseresahagn felt very loved and wanted as he got these books, so blushed with smile and was a bit nervous saying there is really some one who cares about me. He is very grateful about the concern that the family has shown him.”



You can read the rest of the AAI Sponsorship newsletter at this link. Read more about how you too can impact an Ethiopian student's life here.

Keeping our babies warm at night

Many wonderful volunteers contribute their time and talents to help AAI. One such person is Jean Snyder of Ocean Shores, WA who has "lost count" of the many beautiful quilts she has made for the babies of Wanna House. In addition to keeping the babies warm, they contribute joy and bright colors to the environment. Below Jean and her daughter hold up one of two beautiful quilts they have made for the silent auction at our upcoming AAI Summer Gathering at Warm Beach.
Jean writes:

"Sometime ago while I was visiting Merrily I saw a calendar of Ethiopian children. The pictures of the bright smiling children haunted me. My youngest grandchild has so much given to him by doting grandparents, aunts, uncles and great-grandparents. The contrast with children without family members able to provide for them and my own grandchildren was vast. It gives me great pleasure to play with my fabric and make quilts to comfort those special Ethiopian babies. Two years ago my daughter Cheryl Sharpe began quilting and just recently my granddaughter starting making quilts to send to Ethiopia as well. The three of us share ideas and help each other. I am truly blessed."

(Jean in her studio with a colorful baby quilt mid-process)