As many of you know, Families Without Borders has been conducting a letter-writing campaign in celebration of National Adoption Awareness month (November). We are collecting letters about how our lives have been affected by Guatemalan adoptions. These letters will be sent to Sra. Wendy Berger, First Lady of Guatemala and strong supporter of the new adoption law proposal. Letters will also be copied and sent to Ms. Ann Veneman, Executive Director of UNICEF, which is also strongly in favor of adoption law changes in Guatemala.
Although the campaign has been going on for three weeks now, we have only received a few letters. Our goal is to have 100 letters to send to Guatemala from family, adoptees, friends, and community members. Considering that thousands of children have entered the US from Guatemala in the past few years, and tens of thousands of people affected in some way by them, we thought our goal was realistic.
Since Guatemala does not have any way to receive or process the post-placement reports that many of us do for our agencies, they rarely get to hear what happens to our children after they leave Guatemala. But the rumors of child-trafficking for nefarious purposes abound. This is our opportunity to tell officials in Guatemala about how intercountry adoption has affected our children, our families, and our communities.
In hopes of collecting a few more letters, we have extended the deadline for the Celebrating Families - Guatemala campaign. We will now accept letters by email until Saturday, November 19, 2005. Details about the campaign can be found at: www.geocities.com/celebratefamiliesguatemala or www.familieswithoutborders.org
Posted by Kevin at November 16, 2005 04:09 PMI think this is a very important thing to do so that waiting families don't go through the long process I experienced as the Hague issues were in full swing (2003-2004). I am wondering if one of the reasons for a low turn-out of letters is because of the fact that it states to also inclue photographs as part of the letter writing campaign. I will not be sending photographs of my child, for personal reasons, but that isn't impeding my letter writing.
I wonder if people are having a difficult time knowing what to say in these letters. Maybe there could be sample letters or outlines to guide people.
Posted by: Sarah at November 17, 2005 01:54 AMI believe everyone who has been in the adoption process in Guatemala should write...The only ones that really suffer are the children waiting for thei forever families to come and take their children home. We waited 9 months to bring our daughter home,when we got her home and to a physician, we learned that she had a very serious medical problem, undetected in Guatemala, that if not corrected immediately, she would not be with us...please, please find a way to make these adoptions go more quickly, it should not be about money and politics...it is about survival!
Posted by: Lisa at November 17, 2005 10:43 AMSarah,
Anything you have to say about your child that comes from the heart would be perfect. To have guidelines or samples posted could dilute the effectiveness of the letters if they all started to sound the same. That being said, I have a couple of suggestions. You could write about your child's personality, his/her interactions with and role in your family and community, your feelings about his/her birthplace and hopes for his/her future, etc.
Gosh, I just happened to check out the GuatAdopt site today, and saw the request for letters. I just sent ours!! We are more than happy to brag about how well our Claire-bear is doing!
Posted by: Laurie at November 19, 2005 02:32 PM