The Adoption Process

Imagine you are a 7-year old boy, born here in Beius, Romania. You never knew your parents, they died a long time ago, before you were old enough to remember them. Your “family” has consisted of the director, his assistants, and many other boys and girls who have come to the orphanage. Some of these children have been here since before you came; the lucky ones stay only a few years at most. Someday, you hope to be one of these lucky ones. You hope that a nice family will come by and choose you to be their son. Fast-forward a year or so. You are counting down the days before you get to leave. Only a month left! The adoption process is almost complete. Very soon, you will be living in the state of Vermont with your new brother and parents.
You can hardly sleep at night you are so excited! Your dreams are finally being realized! Unfortunately, you never make it to America. The European Union has shut down Romania’s adoption agencies in an effort to deal with corruption in the industry. However, while they may be cleaning up the system, they have ruined your chance at getting a better life and a family. I wish I could tell you that this is a hypothetical story, but it is not. The European Union really did force Romania to shut down its adoption agencies. This act trapped thousands of children in the system, many of which were very close to being adopted by loving families. And this was decades ago. To this day, Romania has still not completely reopened its adoption agencies. Hundreds of thousands of parentless children are trapped in crowded orphanages, waiting until they reach the age of 18 so they can strike out on their own. Sadly, because they do not have a proper upbringing, many of these grown orphans get caught up in prostitution, poverty, and/or criminal activity. This is a huge problem for Romania and these poor children. This issue is very close to my heart for several reasons.
I have always loved and gotten along with children. I have volunteered and worked for years doing child care and Sunday school at my church. At heart, I feel like I am still a kid myself. A second reason is my family’s ties with adoption. Two of my fraternal cousins were adopted from South Korea and my two youngest siblings were adopted from Ghana. Even my best friend has three adopted siblings, so my family is deeply immersed in the adoption world. Finally, I have had the incredible opportunity for the past two summers to spend two weeks both years on a mission trip in Romania. It was here that I learned about the adoption predicament going on in the country and grew close with several orphan girls we served alongside. I am so passionate about this issue because I have friends involved and I wish that they could be as fortunate as my
siblings. How can we fix this problem?
How can we convince Romania to completely reopen its adoption agencies? For a while, only direct family members were allowed to adopt Romanian orphans. Very recently the country opened up international adoption, but only in the sense that Romanian residents of other countries could adopt from their motherland. The next step is to convince Romania to allow all international adoption. Unfortunately, this is exceedingly difficult because the nation is still struggling to escape the confines of their communist era. In order to solve this major problem, the Romanian leaders need to be convinced that they can trust other countries with the care of their orphans. This will take a lot of time and will only come one small step at a time but I truly believe that it can be
done