Giving Back

We are so grateful to our daughters' homelands for giving them life, nurturing them for their first two years, and providing our whole family with a sense of identity and connection that stretches well beyond the boarders of our town or even our nation.  It's tough to maintain that connection through the hectic months and years - we're so blessed to be able to maintain relationships with some of Sasha's baby house mates from Kazakhstan and forge new relationships with other China adoptive families in the area, but, well, if you know anything about our family you know that we're always looking for more :)

So, over the past couple of weeks we've been researching charities that work in the girls' birth areas and are so excited that we have found two nutrition projects and two sponsorship projects to bless other kiddos the way our gals have been blessed!

Here's a quick run-down of the charities we recently started supporting.  I share these for two reasons:

1. These are great projects and well worth anyone's consideration when looking for charities to support
2. To encourage adoptive parents that with a little research you can probably find groups to support that work in your kid's area of birth.  It's a really special thing to us to know that we can affect positive change in little lives just like Sasha and WanYing's and for us having a monthly donation going to these great groups keeps us remembering and praying for all those still waiting.  You can stay involved, even from the other side of the world!

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SPOON Foundation is conducting really cool nutrition research, education, and support all over Kazakhstan. They provide supplements, but even more importantly are working with the Kazakhstani government to change legislation and nutrition guidelines to provide healthy nutrition to all kiddos in institutions.

SPOON was started by a Kaz adoptive mommy who saw the need and effects of malnutrition firsthand in the Kazakhstani baby houses and decided upon her return home with her first child to do something about it.  Oh, and they work in Botakoz, Sasha's babyhouse :)

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We sponsor a little boy just about Sam's age through SOS Villages Kazakhstan. SOS Villages has a children's home in Temirtau, Sasha's birthplace, to protect and care for vulnerable children - kids whose parents are either temporarily or permanently unable to care for them. Temirtau is a poor, heavily industrial area, with all of the social issues that generally accompany, and we love being a little part of providing this young man with a safe, healthy, loving environment like every kid deserves.

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Love Without Boundaries is a charity that works in China and they have a nutrition project in Shangrao, WanYing's SWI. We know that WanYing benefited from this project and even got the cutest little baby photo of WanYing from them after we returned home from China, and we love supporting a program that helped our little one so much.

Love Without Boundaries was started by a group of China adoptive parents who wanted to give back to the country that had given them so much, and we are so glad to be able to support their efforts.

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And lastly, we also are privileged to sponsor foster care for a baby girl through Adopchina, the organization through which our sweet (new) friend Laura sponsored WanYing. Adopchina is based in Spain, but through my highly advanced (and mostly forgotten) college Spanish and the miracles of Google Translate we have succeeded in communicating well enough to sponsor a child of our own in WanYing's SWI. Holt also sponsors kiddos in WanYing's SWI, if you're looking to sponsor a Shangrao kiddo and have less of an appetite for comical translation errors than we do :)