Ten Miracles

Miracle One

There are so many miracles going on at Rancho Santa Fe, the orphanage in La Venta, Honduras, it’s hard to know where to start. Here's the first of ten.

On the edge of 2,000 acres, in the third poorest nation in the Western Hemisphere, at an orphanage called Rancho Santa Fe is a world-class surgery hospital. And it’s totally funded by private donations of money and equipment.

The Holy Family Surgery Center was founded by orthopedic surgeon Peter Daly of St. Paul, Minnesota  and Reinhart Koehler, Director of Family Services for Nuestros Pequeños Hermanos International.

Dr. Peter Daly in one of HFSC's operating rooms

The goal of HFSC is to provide same day surgical procedures for underprivileged patients who otherwise could not afford surgery. Many of these patients struggle to receive medical attention in the few public hospitals due to inadequate access to services and personnel. The first priority is the children at the orphanage followed by people in the surrounding community.

Recovery room

HFSC is a 5,000 square foot facility that has two main operating rooms, a septic surgery room and post-op recovery rooms. The Holy Family Surgery Center annually hosts 3 to 4 surgical brigades, each involving over 200 consults and 70 surgeries in about a week. Additionally a local Honduras surgeon preforms 5-10 simple surgeries every other week for members of the local community.

First Up - Honduras

In about three hours we will begin our first journey of 2012, visiting two orphanages in Honduras; Rancho Santa Fe and Orphanage Emmanuel. Our trip will last ten days beginning with a three hour drive to Chicago to catch a 5:30 AM flight, and then arriving in Tegucigalpa at about 1:30 tomorrow afternoon.

Our first stop will be Rancho Santa Fe, which is about an hour outside the capital. The orphanage is part of the Nuestros Pequeños Hermanos International (NPH) network, which has operations in 9 countries. We hope to learn a great deal from this community of over 500 children. 

Girls in front of their dormitory at Rancho Santa Fe

A thriving, bustling community less than an hour from the nation’s busy capital, Rancho Santa Fe is the second oldest of the NPH homes. Over five hundred boys and girls make their home in this vast wooded oasis in the hills—while an additional one hundred youths who study and live in the capital, Tegucigalpa.

A normal morning sees groups of uniformed children making the pleasant fifteen minute walk down to our Montessori-based kindergarten and elementary school while the older youths head for the on-site junior high school and trade workshops. 

The sounds of tractors in the corn fields and restless cows and chickens drift up from the farm, from which they obtain all of their meat, milk, and eggs, as well as all the corn needed to produce the 45,000 tortillas consumed monthly. Aside from the farm, NPH Honduras also boasts a model greenhouse and vegetable gardens. In the afternoons, children are often seen helping harvest cucumbers or turning the dirt in the garden before they return to the houses to finish homework and play.

Unique to the Honduras family is Casa Pasionista, belonging to the order of Passionist Priests. Casa Pasionista is a hospice for adults living in the final stages of AIDS. Ailing parents can be with their children as their health deteriorates, comforted by the knowledge that after their death, their children will have a secure home with NPH.

Casa Eva, another special house, is a rest home for elderly adults who previously had no one to care for them until coming to NPH. These loved grandparents are included in Ranch activities and add a wonderful balance to our growing family.

Two other important components of the NPH Honduras family are located in the capital. Casa de los Ángeles provides 24-hour care for over fifteen children with severe disabilities. The children also receive physical, occupational, and speech therapy. Pasos Pequeñitos, a children’s daycare center, specifically seeks to help single mothers in difficult circumstances who need extra assistance in caring for their children.

Stay tuned for regular updates and pictures.

Feliz Navidad

A very Merry Christmas video from the Children at Orphanage Emmanuel in Guaimaca Honduras. Blessings to Lydia and David Martinez and all the wonderful others who love on these amazing children.

Pictures of the new Toddler House!

I was very excited to get these early pictures of the progress on the new boys toddler house at Orphanage Emmanuel (OE) in Guaimaca, Honduras. It will be occupied by older toddler boys, who graduate from the toddler house but still act as toddlers. The World Orphan Fund paid for half of the $45,000 (U.S.) cost to build it.

God's timing is perfect as most of the 94 children OE has received in the last month are due to a government children's home burning, and the majority of those are of the ages planned for this new house. OE is also building a new infant house due to be completed next year.

If you'd like to help by making a contribution, you can do so safely and securely by clicking here.  Every donation helps, no matter how modest.

A big thank you to our donors who helped make this new house happen!

Front View of New House

Side View of New House

Inside Room

Bathroom

Loft (there will be railings)

Orphan Adoptions in U.S. Plummet

Foreign adoptions by Americans have dropped by more than half since 2005 -- from around 22,000 per year, to 9,300 last year. Just in the past year, the number of U.S. adoptions of Ethiopian children has dropped 30 percent.

It's become an all too familiar story in the world of international adoption. The nations that traditionally have sent the most children to the United States, including South Korea, China, Guatemala and Russia, have all cut back.

International adoptions by American parents has fallen by almost 60 percent since its peak and recently released figures show a drop of 15 percent just over the past year. All this in the face of a UNICEF report showing 163 million orphans worldwide, 18 million of those have lost both of their parents.

Adoption should always be a last resort when it comes to ensuring the welfare of a child. Equally important, the trade in children requires extreme caution when it comes to inter-country adoptions. No family wants to adopt a child wrongly identified as an orphan. No child wants to be taken away from their country if there are family members who can fulfill the role of parent. But the reduction in the number of adoptions in the United States is alarming.

The demand for healthy babies has been extremely high among American and European parents, who are willing to spend upwards of $25,000 to $50,000 in fees and travel costs. That kind of money — multiplied many thousands of times over — has led to cases of corruption in many countries.

Numerous countries, including Guatemala and Vietnam, have experienced problems such as judges and lawyers taking bribes, and gangs or even police stealing children. In 2008, Guatemala was the leading source of international adoptions in the U.S., with 4,123 children. Over the past year, the number plummeted to 32, as Guatemalan authorities sought to regain control of the country's troubled adoption system.   

New International Accords Have a Dramatic Impact

The "Hague Convention on International Adoption" is an effort to protect against the "sale and trafficking in children." The international accord, drafted in 1993 and implemented by the U.S. in 2008, is meant to regulate a formerly wide-open international adoption marketplace. Tough questions by the State Dept led to a virtual halt in adoptions from Vietnam, Ethiopia and Guatemala. More than 80 countries have signed on to the convention, including China and India. 

And in July, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov signed a pact to create new guidelines for U.S. adoptions of Russian children. The agreement came in response to an incident last year in which a Tennessee woman sent her adopted 7-year-old son on a plane alone back to Moscow with a note saying, "I no longer wish to parent this child." 

The incident and other stories led Russia to reduce the number of children Americans could adopt from a peak of 5,862 in 2004 to 970 over the past year. But the vast majority of the 50,000 Russian children adopted by American parents since 1993 are now growing up in secure and supportive homes. 

A Heated Debate

While there appears to be a consensus that orphans should be kept within their own families or communities whenever possible and adopted domestically if need be, how often international adoptions should be allowed for children who can't find a home in their country of origin has drawn heated debate. 

Advocates of international adoption say that the rare cases of abuse and relatively isolated examples of corruption should not be used as an excuse to deprive needy children of the care and nurturing of a family.
Other advocacy groups believe that the best way to improve the lives of needy children is to provide services and support for families in their home countries.

Caring for the world's most vulnerable children requires both a long-term and a short-term strategy. Alleviating poverty and providing support should be the ultimate goal, and as noted earlier the first and best option is to have a child raised in their own country. But in the meantime there are millions of orphans around the world who could use a home, many of them in the United States.

CBS News and NPR were sources for much of the information contained in this post. The charts are from NPR.

A New Orphan Every 15 Seconds

When we started the World Orphan Fund about 10 months ago it was a leap of faith. We've funded half of the cost to build a toddler house at Orphanage Emmanuel in Honduras and have a strong following on our Facebook page. It's a good start, and in the coming weeks we will launch our website and a newsletter. It's been wonderful to hear the stories of so many who have already been helping and from others we've inspired to get involved for the first time.

We know we're one of hundreds of groups working to support support these children, and we shamelessly promote good causes when we find them. I was surprised early on when I got a note from a charity with a similar name to ours asking that we consider calling ourselves something different. The concern was that we might be confused with them. My response was that there is a great need for what we are doing in the world and I pray that both of our organizations reach as many these children as possible.

Honestly, whether you join with us, or another worthy charity, please just get involved, because the reality that lead to our founding is heartbreaking. For example, according to Family Hope International, an organization that works to connect potential host families with Ukrainian orphans, there are more than 100,000 Ukrainian children under the age of 16 that either live on the streets or in an orphanage. Only 3 percent of those orphans will be adopted once they reach 9 years old and most orphans are released back onto the street, or “age-out” of an orphanage by 18. Of that total, 70 percent of the boys will serve time in prison and 60 percent of the girls become prostitutes. Ten percent of all Ukrainian orphans will commit suicide before the age of 18. I just can't stand idly by knowing that.

Worldwide it's an epidemic. Every 15 SECONDS, another child becomes an AIDS orphan in Africa Every year 2,102,400 more children become orphans there alone.

143,000,000 Orphans spend an average of 10 years in an orphanage or foster home. That's a number equal to half the U.S. Population.

And while approximately 250,000 children are adopted annually, EVERY YEAR 14,050,000 children still grow up as orphans and age out of the system. Every 2.2 SECONDS, another orphan child ages out with no family to belong to and no place to call home.

At Orphanage Emmanuel, where we've focused our early efforts, the statistics are just as staggering. This week alone they received 63 new kids, expect 20 more in the next few days. That means a growth rate of more than 17% in just over a year. The Toddler house we helped pay for will help house some of these children and we look forward to seeing it in January. But along with housing, these 83 new children will need sponsors to both love them, and help pay for their needs. If you are interested in sponsoring a child at Emmanuel, please email me at rj@theworldorphanfund.org.

Also in January we will visit a new Orphanage, Rancho Santa Fe (RSF), to learn about how they care for over 500 orphans there. RSF is one of several orphanages in the Nuestros Pequenos Hermano's (NPH) network of orphanages that care for children in 9 Countries. We are very interested in their vocational training for the children and the success they appear to have in helping children into the general population once they age out.

In April we hope to visit smaller orphanages in Honduras, ones where our support can make the biggest difference. These are orphanages that are 10-15 years behind Emmanuel and Santa Fe.

In June the WOF hopes to sponsor it's first youth mission trip for younger adults (18-25), hopefully to Emmanuel. Our plan is to assemble a team from several congregations from Wisconsin in a effort to rapidly connect churches with both orphans and orphanages. Our goal is multi-layered. Create future mission teams out of each congregation, encourage church support of the orphans and orphanages, and strategically locate the churches near schools that the U.S. Government has approved for non-resident children. By doing so we increase our chances of finding host families for children we hope to bring to the U.S. to educate.

Have ideas, see a need or just want to get involved? Drop me an email at rj@theworldorphanfund.org.