China Bound!

When we were in China for Eliana's adoption we visited the orphanage where she spent the first 3 1/2 years of her life. It was an emotional, life-changing experience that made us more determined than ever to do what we could to be a voice for the children who have no voice.




Entrance to the Shanghai Children's Home

Now, a year and a half later, I am making plans to return to China in an attempt to do exactly that.  I am planning to travel with a team from SuperKids Charity.  We will be spending two days working with children in the Shanghai Children's Home, where Eliana lived.  Then we plan to travel to JiangXi Province where we will spend several days working with children in several orphanages there.  From JiangXi we will head to Hunan Province and go to the Changsha #1 orphanage.

So what does SuperKids do exactly? and more specifically what will I be doing?  SuperKids is an organization that sends doctors and therapists to orphanages worldwide to work with children and to train caregivers in order to improve the children's quality of life and to make it more likely that they will find forever homes. 

Some of the children in Eliana's group

More recently the focus has also been on advocating for waiting children and I guess that is where I come in (because we all know I'm not a doctor or a therapist!).  I will be taking pictures of children who are available for adoption in order to more effectively advocate for them and of children who have a family working to bring them home. (If you have ever adopted you know what a gift that is!)  I'll also be spending time learning to know the children (holding, cuddling, playing, drawing pictures,etc.) as much as possible.  One of the most important parts of advocacy is to help people see the child beyond the written file.  It is so easy to get lost in the details and strange translations of a file and forget that it represents a precious, unique child!

I am really excited about this opportunity and especially excited to be able to travel with Pat Marcus, the waiting child advocate extraordinaire.  She met Eliana before we did and willingly spent time talking to us about her.  Later she took gifts from us to her and sent us an update on how she was doing along with pictures.

As we all know, international travel is expensive, so I am raising funds to cover some of these costs here or you can donate to SuperKids Charity here (there is a donate button on their sidebar). Thank you so much for helping in this way!  You can also help by sharing these links and telling others about SuperKids!  Together we can truly make a difference!