Kiva, anyone?
I need to step away from the bitterness and rancor in the Vietnam adoption community for a while. Think about the irony of that. Well-meaning people wanting to do good in the world by helping a child are attacking each other personally. What is wrong with that picture? Where is the tolerance we would hope these people as parents would teach their children?
Before I slip back into that, I wanted to remind myself that corruption doesn’t permeate the world. That you can do good for people without worrying whether you’re engaged in a crime. I received an email today from another organization with which I work. It’s called Kiva at www.kiva.org. I didn’t know much about microfinance before I started volunteering with them, but I encourage you to check it out. Kiva lets you make a small loan to a small business around the world. You get to choose which business you fund (e.g., you want to help a single mother, you get to decide). The amounts loaned to these people are extremely small in our world (under $1000 and Kiva wants individuals to contribute no more than $25 per loan) and the repayment of such loans is almost 100%. A very little goes a very long way.
Other than the fact that I get to choose who I lend to, the funds actually get repaid to my account, so I get to reinvest the funds that are repaid. All of my loans have been repaid or are on time on their repayments, so the funds just get passed on to another person trying to build their business.
This picture above is one of the women whose loans I’ve funded.
Cut and run?
An interesting comment from Emanual prompted me to consider again whether adoption is inevitably corrupt. I’ve been devouring material in the past few months trying to understand how corruption occurs and whether it’s possible to have an ethical adoption. I’m certain that ethical adoptions occur, so I don’t believe the answer is to cut and run. I think the answer is for us as PAPs to both be proactive in seeing that our agencies are ethical and for us to make sure that we ourselves behave ethically.
We all need to stand up for integrity in adoption. Check out your agency either before you sign, or if you’re already with them, check them out now. This is extremely difficult work – you are never going to get adequate information – at some point you’re going to have to make a judgment call and rely on your instincts. Ask your agency the hard questions – don’t rely on an assumption that someone else must have asked the questions before you. Demand answers to these hard questions. Don’t let yourself be fed rhetoric that any agency could give you. If you don’t get the answers you need on your first phone call. Call again. The agency should not get frustrated at the fact that you’re checking them out.
If you’re able, do a docket search for litigation against your agency. I checked many, and believe me (or don’t – do your own research), there are a lot of cases that have been filed against agencies on the so-called “approved list.” On certain boards, you will see one civil case against one agency cited time after time, as if it is the only salient piece of litigation out there. This case has yet to be decided, and could simply be based on groundless accusations, but it is treated as if it were a decision from the US Supreme Court condemning this agency. But, two considerations about litigation. First, do not assume that just because a case is filed against an agency that the claims made in that case are true – this is America, and we use our civil courts not only for justice but also for satisfying our vendettas. And second, do not assume that just because you hear no references of litigation against the agencies that are considered to be ethical that there is no such litigation. You’d be surprised.
Look at Guide Star for details on both your agency and their charitable foundation (almost all have them). See where the money goes. Understand how corporations work. There’s been a lot on the boards about the “greedy agencies” just wanting to get more clients in the door for fees. But the factor a lot of people seem to forget is that these are NON-profit corporations. These agencies aren’t distributing dividends to their stockholders, they’re not making a profit. The employees in my agency are not well paid and they’re not picking up extra on the charitable foundation side. I’ve checked. The only way they’re pocketing any real money is if they are siphoning off the international fees or getting kick backs from corrupt facilitators. Show me where that is occurring and I’ll do more than point my fingers at them, but until I have something looking like proof, I will not.
We live in a culture where the mere mention of the word “corporation” gets people in a lather. But, people, these are not the oil companies we detest so much. These are agencies whose sole purpose is to find families for children without them. That is what adoption is about. It’s not about you or me or our desire to have a child. It’s not about the fact that you may have been trying to get pregnant for 10 years. It’s about orphans who have a bleak future, who are possibly malnourished and languishing in orphanages in countries that experience poverty at a level you and I cannot understand. It’s about finding homes for children who, if not adopted, are going to be cast aside from the orphanage around age 15, left to fend for themselves in countries that don’t even have the limited safety net we have here. So, do I think we give up on adoption? No way.
My desire to adopt was formed when I was a child. There are millions of children in this world who need families, and I truly believe that those of us who are capable have a responsibility to take care of them. However, there are evil people in this world, people who will prey on those desperate to have a family, who are willing to buy or steal children for a fee. Soon after countries open to international adoption, these monsters come out of the woodwork; that seems to be the cycle. But, I don’t think that these people play a part in the majority of adoptions. I believe they’re fairly rare, but once they’re discovered, we jump to the conclusion that this is the typical behavior. To make that leap, though, I think we have to assume that most people are evil, which I will not do. These people certainly exist, but I will not let them keep me from giving a child a future. Will I adopt from Vietnam? I certainly hope so, but it will be in an ethically sound way. Once I understood more about the gender issue, I became open to either gender (and how crazy was it that I wasn’t before?). I’m going to continue to think critically throughout the process. I’m not going to turn a blind eye to questionable paperwork, ignore red flags or engage in questionable behavior. I believe that if I do, I become complicit in this corruption. That’s just not going to happen.
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Etta’s Hats
Where I’ve Been
