This piece originally appeared in the now-defunct Gazillion Voices in August 2014 when the writer was in her fifth year of living in Seoul. It has been updated seven years later in August 2021, four-and-a-half years after leaving Seoul, to reflect the passage of time etc.

*The image above is from Holt Heritage Camp at Camp Lane in Oregon 1986. Stacey, Kim, and Tara are seated 4th row up; 2nd, 3rd, 4th in from the left

I carry with me a bundle of letters. A bundle of letters that I have carried with me every place I have lived in this world – from Lake Worth to London to Mittersill to Vilnius to Minneapolis to Seoul to Portland and to every city/country in between. In this bundle, which I always keep in a place so that if there is a fire I can save them, are letters from Tara Bilyeu Footner.

Tara and I met when we were 9 and attending Holt Heritage Camp in Oregon for the first time in the summer of ’86.

We became lifelong pen pals, and I would dare to say, some 36 years later, we are lifelong friends.

Gurgaon: A couple, waiting for years to have a child of their own, has been booked for illegally adopting a two-month-old girl. The mother of the child, a minor from Jharkhand, eloped with a man from her state and handed the girl to the couple from Sector 71, police said.

The illegal adoption came to light when the couple visited the One Stop Centre Sakhi — a unit of the Child Welfare Committee — for a birth certificate of the girl. The officials there found that the couple had bypassed the norms for adoption and merely got an affidavit made through a lawyer that said that the minor girl from Jharkhand was willingly handing over her biological daughter to them.

The CWC has taken custody of the child and sent her to a shelter home in Faridabad. Following a complaint at Badshapur police station, the couple has been booked under section 80 (adoption of child without following established provision) of the Juvenile Justice (Care and Protection) Act. The section carries a maximum punishment of one year in jail.

Tapan Roy, a private firm employee, and his wife Jayashri had been trying for a child ever since they got married four years ago.

Originally from North 24-Parganas in West Bengal, Tapan came in contact with Milan Pramanik, a tea seller in Sector 71. Since

Sarah Labee_ Johanna and Matthias- Veenendaal- series adoption (2)

Johanna had been talking about Colombia ever since she could talk. Sarah was afraid she wouldn't find a family. And Matthias felt less need to go looking for his biological family. Nevertheless, the entire Labee family went on a roots trip in 2016.

Are there any topics that have not yet been discussed that they would like to mention? At the end of the interview, Matthias, Sarah and Johanna Labee look at each other for a moment. “Yes,” says Sarah. “I wish everyone a roots trip, but let it be a well-considered choice. You have no guarantee of a good outcome. The foundation that was looking for our families in Colombia explicitly warns against this. You may want to contact your biological family, but you do not know whether they are open to that.”

itchy

The Colombian flag is on the cupboard under the stairs in the hall of the Labee family in Veenendaal. In the living room, photos recall the roots of Matthias, Sarah and Johanna. It is therefore not surprising that they are interested in news about adoption. But it is certainly not the case that it immediately dominates the conversations at the table, the three of them agree in unison.

HYDERABAD: In what would appear to be a script of a popular Bollywood potboiler of the 1970s, three siblings who got lost four years ago in Hyderabad were reunited this week, thanks to a chance selfie and a DNA test.

Daughters of a knife sharpener of Kukatpaly, Aishwarya (12) Akhila (11) and Asha (7) suddenly found themselves all alone during the summer of 2017 when their father died of a heart attack and their heartbroken mother, a daily wager, disappeared.

A few locals chanced upon Aishwarya and Akhila and took them to an orphanage at Ameenpur, while Asha was rescued by her grandmother from the streets

“She used to take Asha to a shrine at Kukatpally for begging and in 2020, she also died. Asha was handed over to local police and they in turn shifted her to the child care institution (CCI) at Yousufguda,” said district welfare officer, Hyderabad, P Akkeshwar Rao.

Meanwhile, both Aishwarya and Akhila were shifted to an orphanage run by an NGO called ‘Helping Hands Humanity’ (HHH) at

This is the 13th article in an adoption series. Some adoptees have echoed the previous article's question, "What is the real reason this country cannot protect its own children?" To elaborate on this inquiry requires that the series broach another question: Is this country incapable of offering such protection, or is it resisting efforts to do so and refusing to take responsibility? Shifting away from the individual experiences of adoptees and beginning to address the state's accountability is an important step in moving forward to rectify the "right of origin" for adoptees. ? ED.

By Lee Kyung-eun

gettyimagesbank

If, as the dominant narrative claims, transnational adoption is about rescuing war orphans, then the surge in inter-country adoption in the 1960s unravels such assertions. So let us drop the pretext of war orphans as an impetus. What about "economic" or "social" orphans? Then we must ask how poor is poor enough to warrant casting children from their own country on a massive scale with such persistence.

As this series explored earlier, the immigration laws of the receiving countries spurred the trend of adopting foreign babies by employing an array of weak regulations that facilitated inter-country adoptions. Concurrently, Korea (later followed by other sending countries) responded by initiating corresponding measures to move children abroad.

This year, the legislation on child adoption has undergone a number of changes, including changes to the extension of the validity of the adopter certificate and the introduction of more debureaucratization measures in the adoption procedure. Then, in order to reflect all the changes that have taken place this year, the authorities on Wednesday published the new models of documents used in the procedure for adopting children, including the certificate of person or family fit to adopt, the application for assessment and the application of international adoption.

Order of the Ministry of Labor and Social Protection no. 1,430 / 2021, published on Wednesday in the Official Gazette no. 774, contains new models of documents used in the adoption procedure .

Specifically, the normative act contains the new model of:

the certificate of a person or family fit to adopt;

the request for evaluation in order to issue the certificate of person / family able to adopt;

From: Arun Dohle

Date: Thu, 12 Aug 2021 at 11:26

Subject: Reminder: Fwd: Reminder: FW: Unicef Netherlands position in Intercountry Adoption ?

To: Cornelius Williams

Dear Mr. Williams,

When Cierra Simon looks back on her life, she has many questions and very few answers.

“There was a complete alienation … because of their actions,” she said.

Simon was taken into foster care in Ontario when she was six and a Saskatchewan family adopted her when she was nine. While she acknowledges she needed to be separated from her parents, she said the choices made for her resulted in her becoming homeless and unaware of her First Nations heritage.

She believes the system needs to change and told Global News the effects of adoption will always be a part of her.

Simon was born in Kingston 28 years ago. She lived with her parents, who she said struggled with addictions, and then with her grandparents. She recalls that her grandparents were overwhelmed with raising the then-six-year-old Simon and her two younger sisters, so the girls were transferred to the care of Dave and Deb Carter, a foster family in Bracebridge, Ont.

Despite an earlier agreement, taxi drivers who operate through Uber in Amsterdam have again refused drag queens. 

Johan Hol is one of the drag queens who was not allowed to get into a taxi. "When the Uber driver saw that I was in drag, he said he would not give me a ride because I was not human." 

It also happened to drag queen Sletlana, who points out that Uber's website is all rainbow-themed. "Your route is colored in rainbow colors. They say they offer safety for everyone. But it seems like pink-washing ."

 

"They say they provide safety for everyone. But it seems like pink-washing"

drag queen Sletlana

In 2019, a declaration of intent for a 'discrimination-free taxi market' was signed by Uber, all Amsterdam Authorized Taxi Organizations (TTOs) and the municipality, among others. But Richard Keldoulis, also known as drag queen Jennifer Hopelezz , does not think it has helped.

For "The Land of Promises", the Belgian photographer (27) returned to her native country and gives her personal view on the one-child policy in China.

A man is about to leave for China for the first time . In the hall of Zaventem airport he meets the eight other Belgians with whom he will spend the next two weeks. In total six families flew to Beijing at the end of July 1994.

After a day's layover, they leave again, this time to Changsha, the capital of Hunan province in the south of the country. From Changsha, the group traveled by bus to the countryside. Since his departure in Brussels, the man has filmed everything, including the endless fields and the kilometers of journeys through desolate landscapes.

After dropping off their belongings at the hotel and completing some administrative formalities at the notary, the families finally arrive at the Yueyang orphanage. The place is faded, the paint is peeling off the walls. From the bus, the man films the arrival in the courtyard of the building, as well as the waiting that follows. Youqine, then eight months old, is finally introduced to him and she crawls into his arms for the first time. The nannies from the orphanage then bring the other children. Six girls were adopted that day. Youqine's father was one of the first Belgians to adopt a child from China.

In 2017, nearly a quarter of a century later, time and memory erased many things, but the records of these adoptive families have remained completely intact. For Youqine, the period of rejection from her country of origin has come to an end, and a time of questions seems to have come: "For years I had a conflicted relationship with China, I did not want to return at all. I was terrified of it, but when I 23, I instinctively felt I was ready. I think it's something grown up, wanting to know where you are in your life."