Why Orphans Matter

"Orphans are easier to ignore before you know their names. They are easier to ignore before you see their faces. It is easier to pretend they're not real before you hold them in your arms. But once you do, everything changes.”


I am bitterly disappointed in my Facebook friends. Around two weeks ago, I started regularly posting links to Jaxon's Reece's Rainbow profile asking people to donate whatever they could, no matter how small an amount. I asked for spare change. I asked for just one dollar. I posted links to the RR site. I posted links to other parents' adoption blogs. Pictures. Statistics. Everything I could think of. To date, only ONE person, my beautiful cousin Mary, has donated to Jaxon's Angel Tree fundraiser. I thank her for her selfless gift. But what is wrong with the rest of my friends?

Do they see Jaxon's (NOT his real name) chubby cheeks and serene face and assume he is already being well taken care of? Do they assume that he's placed with a foster family who loves him? Do they not think a dollar or two will make a difference? Do they think that everyone else is donating so they don't have to? Do they think it's a scam, or a disreputable organization? Or...(hardest to swallow) Do they just not CARE about what happens to orphans around the world?

Let me share some disturbing facts with you all (taken from the RR website )

In Central and Eastern European countries alone (this would include Ukraine, Kazakhstan, Romania, etc, but NOT Russia), there are more than 1.5 MILLION CHILDREN who have been abandoned by their families for one reason or another and are living in "public care" (that's the nice way to put it). If statistically, 1 out of every 733 live births results in a child with Down syndrome, that means at any given time there are 2,046 children with Down syndrome who need families. THAT'S JUST IN EUROPE!! Some do not survive because of serious medical complications…some do not survive because of lack of medical attention, lack of food, lack of LOVE.

In Russia, there are over 700,000 children waiting for families, meaning at least 955 children with Down syndrome wait, languishing. In ASIA (China, Hong Kong, Korea, India), there are 3,572,000 orphans, with nearly 5000 children with Down syndrome who are unwanted. Many of those children are killed at birth. The "lucky" ones end up in orphanages and foster care situations.

In the United States alone, 137 million people claim to be Christians of some denomination. If only 1% of the Christians in this country adopted just ONE CHILD, 1.37 MILLION CHILDREN from abroad would have loving, Christian families to grow up in. Of those 1.37 million, 1,869 of those children have DOWN SYNDROME.



ORPHANS MATTER, PEOPLE!

In Eastern Europe, orphanages are called "babyhouses". While some are better than others, and have dedicated workers caring for these sweet children, the reality is this:

Orphans in Russia are herded through a maze of state structures operated by three government ministries, which compete for limited state funds and overlap in their mandates for certain categories of orphans and children with disabilities. The Ministry of Health is charged with the care of abandoned infants from birth toroughly four years of age, and houses them in 252 baby houses which are called "dom rebyonka," housing from 18-20,000 children.

All abandoned infants spend their first three to four years in a baby house, and are then distributed to institutions under the control of either the Ministry of Education or the Ministry of Labor and Social Development. Among those under the Ministry of Education, one group of children is deemed to have no disabilities, and the second group contains children diagnosed as lightly disabled, and officially termed "debil."

The most common institution for the "educable” children is called a dyetskii dom (children's home), which generally houses boys and girls. They generally attend regular Russian public schools for the compulsory nine years, where they can earn a secondary school diploma, or they can leave school at the age of fifteen.

Abandoned children may also live in school-internaty, where they receive their education inside the institution where they live. Following secondary school, these children in the care of the Ministry of Education may receive two to three years of further training in a trade, which they pursue at another boarding institution under the Pedagogical Technical Directorate (PTU). While studying skills such as carpentry, electricity, masonry, and stuffed-animal making, among others, the children are housed in dormitories staffed by the Ministry of Education.

At the age of five, the second group of orphans under the Education Ministry's purview—the debily—is channeled to spets internaty (or "auxiliary internaty"), where they reside while taking a significantly abbreviated course of education totaling six years, far short of a high school diploma. They are also offeredvocational training, but their program and residence are generally segregated from the non-debil orphans.

Under Russian law, the state must provide all orphans leaving the care of the Education Ministry with an initial stipend, housing and employment. But the economic crisis since the introduction of market reforms and privatization of apartments makes this increasingly difficult. Indeed, the prospect of life in the outside world is a source of great worry to the orphans and child welfare experts alike.

The Ministry of Labor and Social Development takes charge of orphans who are diagnosed by a board of state medical and educational reviewers as having heavy physical and mental disabilities at the age of four. Officially labeled "imbetsil" or "idiot," they are committed to closed institutions which often resemble Dickensian asylums of the nineteenth century. There they remain until the age of eighteen. Those who survive to that age are transferred to adult psychoneurological internaty, or asylums, for the duration of their lives.

Fragmentary statistics on the mortality rates in the institutions under the Ministry of Labor and Social Development indicate that these orphans are at significant risk of premature death. One leading child welfare advocate in Moscow told Human Rights Watch that estimates from government figures indicate the death rate in these internaty is twice the rate in the general population. He also knows one internat where he said that the death rate rose to as high as three and a half times the rate in the society outside its walls.

Folks, we can save these kids. We can do it one person and one dollar at a time. International adoption is prohibitively expensive for most families, and that's where wonderful orgainzations like Reece's Rainbow come in and why I'm still commited to raising money for little Jaxon (and others). They provide grant money to families that commit to adopting these "lost children" so that they can afford to bring them home. It seems so unfair that it should cost so much to rescue these kids, but there is a ransom to be paid for them and we are ALL responsible for paying it.

So, PLEASE (yes, I'm begging here), go to Reece's Rainbow or another orphan advocacy site and donate what you can? These kids don't ask for much. A dollar or two from each of my readers and my Facebook friends would help so much! Here are some of the faces of the kids you'll be helping.