Feedback From Dillon About Haiti

Love your blog and really appreciated your mentioning Dillon and our Haiti program. However, I hope you don’t mind my contacting you to clarify your understanding of the current Haiti orphan situation. Dillon has been greatly overwhelmed with calls and inquiries over the past week since the earthquake with families interested in adopting from Haiti. We have been so overwhelmed that we created the screening form so that families could place their name on a waiting list to be contacted later when adoptions from Haiti might resume. Unfortunately, we don’t know when that might take place or if the requirements to adopt from Haiti might even be relaxed so that more families might qualify to adopt.

The reality about the Haitian orphans who are entering the US right now, which the media is not clearly stating, is that these children already have adoptive families. These children had already been identified as orphans and had been matched with a family in the US prior to the earthquake. However, children who may have been orphaned because of the earthquake won’t become available for international adoption for at least 1-2 years as every effort will be made to first locate a family member within Haiti to care for these children.

Would you mind joining us in educating families about the true realities about Haiti’s orphans and what families can realistically do to help?

· Families can donate through Dillon to assist Gladys in caring for the children who she has taken in as a result of the earthquake along with the children who were already in her care

· Families can donate to another charitable organization of their choice.

· Families can also consider our other country programs where there are many other children available for adoption who have also been orphaned because of some type of “earthquake-tsunami-trauma” in their lives.

· Families can pray for comfort and healing for the Haitian children who have been traumatized by this tragedy and pray that they will be reunited with family members quickly.

· Families can place their name on our waiting list if their heart is really set on adopting from Haiti with no guarantee of when they will be able to begin the process to bring a child home.

We so appreciate your concern for all children suffering in the world and support of our work to make a difference in their lives. We hope you will join us in encouraging families to look at all of their options that are available to help the children affected by the Haiti earthquake.