Orphans on the News Agenda

There appears to be one "good" thing that has come out of the Haitian crisis and that is that orphans seem to somehow have made it onto the agenda of major new agencies around the globe. I wish that it didn't take a tragedy like this to get people thinking about orphans because Haiti and Ethiopia and India and Uganda and (fill in the blank) had orphans long before January 2010. They just weren't as newsworthy then, apart from a global catastrophe, even though many of them, like Haitian orphans now, lacked food and shelter and safety. I heard more about orphans today on CNN that I have heard in the last year as the network covered the many ways that Haiti's numerous orphaned children are being united with forever families, many of them American. Thankfully the US government has taken action at some of the highest levels to expedite the process of bringing Haitian orphans to the US where they can be provided with adequate medical care and support in a safe environment through the provisions of humanitarian parole. How can you not want to applaud Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell for calling on every resource at his disposal to get in there and rescue orphaned children? I know I cried when I watched this.



However, there is another important point to be made that may be being missed by some of the emotional image-driven media coverage of late about the Haitian orphan crisis. I appreciated hearing this interview with Tom DiFilipo, head of the Joint Council on International Children’s Services, on PRI's The World today. The JCICS plays an integral role in helping to ensure that international adoptions are ethical and legitimate. In the interview, DiFilipo reminds listeners that the children coming to the US now are children whose families have been in the maddening paperchase for 3-4 YEARS. It's not as if you can just show up with a big heart and take a child home to safety (as much as many of us would love to do that). He points out that airlifting children to another country (as is currently being proposed by Sen. Bill Nelson in what is being called "Operation Pierre") is not always the best or most appropriate course of action, even if the motivation behind the action is noble and compassionate. If children are true orphans, then finding them a forever family is certainly the goal. However, it must first be determined that the children in question are indeed orphans. And there lies the problem in Haiti now. With such a radical lack of infrastructure given current conditions (infrastructure was sadly lacking before the earthquake), determining whether or not a child's relatives are dead, in a hospital or merely just displaced by impassable roads becomes incredibly difficult. So what are the alternatives? Leave children sleeping out in the dirt, unprotected, with lack of adequate food or water until someone shows up or ship them off to another country hoping that you aren't taking them from their culture and their lives without just cause? It's a tough situation and one I find very discouraging. My heart breaks for these children and I would take a Haitian child tomorrow if I was asked to. But, I also know that as an adoptive parent, that last thing I would ever want to do would be to take a child from a birth family that loved that child and wanted to care for him/her. It's an incredibly difficult situation and one that, more than anything, needs to be bathed in prayer.

I continue to pray about what I can do to help. Here's one fun thing I came upon today. If you like Petunia Picklebottom Diaper Bags, you may be interested to know that the company is connected with the Hands and Feet Project, an orphanage near the epicenter of the quake. They are currently running a Shop for A Cause sale right now to raise funds for Haitian orphans. Buy something chic and help those in dire need. It's just one way among so many to help right now. Here's one more great program - also a HopeChest initiative - providing funding to Haiti. As many of us that can need to do all that we can.