40 percent decline in overseas adoptions by Americans since 2004

Idaho's Impact
Haiti scandal overshadows bigger threat to evangelical adoption efforts.
from Christianity Today

The high-profile legal saga of the 10 Idaho-based Baptists arrested in January for attempting to smuggle 33 Haitian children into the Dominican Republic is winding down. But evangelical adoption advocates wonder what the long-term impact will be.

Leading orphan care advocate Russell Moore suggested in the days following the arrests that the scandal might be a black eye to evangelicals' adoption efforts worldwide. But two months later, Moore said he is no longer worried about a fallout.

"In many ways, the controversy served as an opportunity to clarify what we mean and what we do not mean," said Moore, dean of the School of Theology at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. "No one in the Christian orphan care community is calling for children to be adopted who are not in fact orphans. And no one is calling for children to be adopted apart from the legitimate processes."

A larger hurdle for international adoptions by evangelicals may be new restrictions on adoptions in countries where they have been most prevalent, including China, Guatemala, Russia, Vietnam, and Liberia.

China, which has traditionally accounted for the majority of adoptions to the U.S., rewrote its qualifications for adoptive parents in 2007. Guatemala, the second-largest source of American adoptions, completely shut down its program in 2008 due to widespread corruption, though it will launch a new adoption system this June. Since 2004, these and other restrictions have resulted in a 40 percent decline in overseas adoptions by Americans—from an all-time high of almost 23,000 in 2004 to fewer than 12,800 in 2009, according to the U.S. State Department.

Read the complete article here:  http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2010/may/2.14.html?start=1

Orphan Care Groups Come Together to Help Haiti

An article from Yahoo news:
Disaster Response Experts Team With Orphan Care Organizations to Create Long-Term Solutions in Haiti
Unique team to deploy Valentine's Day

RALEIGH, N.C., Feb. 9 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- A volunteer team of U.S. disaster response experts and orphan care providers is coming together to provide strategic help to Haitian churches. The team will equip and train Haitian church leaders to provide local, long-term care for orphaned Haitian children in the aftermath of the January earthquake.

The Haiti Orphan Relief Team (HORT) is a cooperative volunteer effort of disaster response experts and orphan-care professionals from many U.S.-based ministries that have joined forces to respond to the crisis in Haiti. An initial HORT on-the-ground team will deploy for a two week period beginning on February 14, 2010. The team will work to identify churches in Haiti that can be paired with U.S. churches for ongoing partnerships in caring for orphaned children, so that local resources can sustain this effort beyond the HORT team's deployment.
"We know that this disaster is not going to be fixed overnight, but by putting in place key pieces of infrastructure, efforts can be sustained and strengthened long after the HORT team has returned to the United States," said John E. Roberts, past Director of the Federal Government's National Interagency Training Center, and Incident Command System (ICS) team commander for HORT. "We are looking to build a long-term solution to the immediate crisis."

Recognizing that many Haitian church facilities were destroyed, HORT will use advanced mapping techniques developed by the U.S. government to physically identify the church facilities that are best able to provide long-term solutions to children now and in the future.

"We are looking for churches that want to become part of the long-term solution to the orphan need in Haiti. Â We encourage U.S. churches to come alongside the churches of Haiti to address this catastrophe," said Paul Myhill, President, World Orphans, and a member of the deployment team.

A Valentine's Day fund-raising drive is under way to help HORT deploy. Donors can personalize an eCard with a Valentine message and for every eCard sent, the team will personally deliver a Valentine to a Haitian orphan.

"Outside help alone won't reach Haiti's deepest need. If we're serious about helping Haiti's orphans toward a bright future, it'll be absolutely vital to equip and support committed local Haitian churches to care for the orphans in their communities," said Jedd Medefind, President of the Christian Alliance for Orphans.
More about HORT can be found at: http://www.haitiorphanrelief.org/

Collaborators in this effort include:
Christian Alliance for Orphans, http://www.christianalliancefororphans.org/
Global Aid Network, a ministry of Campus Crusade for Christ International, http://www.gainusa.org/
Hope for Orphans, a ministry of FamilyLife, http://www.hopefororphans.org/
Lifesong for Orphans, http://www.lifesongfororphans.org/
Love Haiti, http://www.lovehaitimissions.com/
Loving Shepherd Ministries, http://www.loving-shepherd.org/
Sweet Sleep, http://www.sweetsleep.org/
Together for Adoption, http://www.togetherforadoption.org/
University of North Carolina, School of Public Health, http://www.sph.unc.edu/
World Orphans, http://www.worldorphans.org/


(http://news.yahoo.com/s/usnw/20100209/pl_usnw/DC52297)