Prospective adoptive parents from Malta and Italy talk to Gaon Connection about being stuck in a limbo as COVID-19 restrictions in India leave them in an unenviable position.

When prospective adoptive parents, known in the adoption parlance as PAPs, start their adoption journey, they know that it involves a lot of paperwork and requires a lot of patience. The process is all the more exhausting when it is international or inter-country adoption.

What happens when after successfully going through each stage of the adoption process – from registering with the agency, filing the requisite paperwork, overcoming bureaucratic hurdles, completing home study reports, being placed in the queue to finally be matched with a child, a process that can often take more than two years – the prospective adoptive parents are suddenly stopped in their tracks?

From being just days away to bringing their child home to suddenly in limbo. The wait can be torturous.

As is with Angie and Kevin Farrugia, residents of Malta, who are anxiously keeping tabs on every bit of news coming in from India, especially those pertaining to international travel, that is, the resumption of commercial international flights. As per the latest news, the Indian government has extended the ban on international flights till July 31.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1XNpOuta8Qu7U_kegciqaxihUryhr_aay/view?usp=drivesdk

ReportageEenkindbeleid

Chinezen zetten zich over hun schaamte heen om op zoek te gaan naar weggegeven dochters

Het pleintje in Shouning waar de Chinese ouders komen zoeken naar hun weggegeven dochters. Beeld Eefje Rammeloo

Chinese ouders durven eindelijk te zoeken naar dochters die ze lang geleden weggaven. Het eenkindbeleid is alweer een paar jaar afgeschaft, dus een boete krijgen ze niet meer. Achter de schaamte die overblijft, schuilt de diepe behoefte te weten hoe het met hun kind gaat.

Eefje Rammeloo2 juli 2020, 10:57

Chinese parents finally dare to look for daughters they gave away long ago. The one-child policy has been abolished for a few years now, so they no longer get a fine. Behind the shame that remains is the deep need to know how their child is doing.

Eefje Rammeloo2 July 2020 , 10:57 AM

Ye Yunfeng has a face full of laughter lines, the face of someone who likes to get up to mischief and can laugh happily. He must be a nice father to his son and daughter. There are two of them, the third was an accident. The laugh lines suddenly disappear. "Had it been a son, I might have fled into the mountains with him." It was the heyday of the one-child policy, and Farmer Ye couldn't pay another fine.

His parents still knew someone who could make the baby disappear. The girl was a few days old when her parents gave her to a crippled man in the morning. “The sun wasn't up yet,” Ye recalls. When he regretted it a few years later, he went after the man, but he turned out to be dead. He would give something to see his now 34-year-old daughter. The great thing is: nobody can fix it anymore, because the one-child policy is history.

A few hundred parents spend their Saturday afternoon on a square in the town of Shouning. They walk restlessly from one side of the square to the other. Maybe their daughter will also register just today. On a table in the semicircular gazebo lie sterile-wrapped cotton swabs and needles. The ladies who manage the table are sure to prick the fingers of the seekers. They drip some blood onto a card that they staple to a form in a brown envelope. Those who cannot write can leave it to them.

---------- Forwarded message ---------

From: Per Sundberg

Date: Thu 2. Jul 2020 at 13:50

Subject: SV: MFoF redovisar slutrapport om indikatorer

To: ACT

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90 years of IST: the structural and substantive change in the International Social Service from its beginnings to the present day - Part I.

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World Children Foundation

The quality of the mediation process

an intercountry adoption permit holder

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On WhatsApp, Instagram and Facebook and soon also with their own websites, Chinese adoptees find each other. Dutch initiatives that may soon be active worldwide. To help each other in the search for identity and roots, or just for some recognition and fun.

This is the vision of Sien Alting Siberg (25) and Kya Jonker (23). Sien works at Fiom as a specialist care worker and Kya will graduate this year as a social worker. They have set up an international Facebook group for Chinese adoptees: The WAI Society. The World Adoptees Interpersonal Development Society focuses on personal development, root questions and the search for biological family. Because Sien was reunited with her biological family in 2015 and Kya is still busy with her search process, the two ladies can shed light on different phases with their experience.

In addition, Adoptiepedia was founded, initially only available on Instagram. Soon also as a foundation with a website. And indeed, think of Wikipedia, the free online encyclopedia, but then specifically for adoptees from China and with reliable information. "Because we are different from adoptees from other countries. And because we are different from other (read: non-adopted) Chinese in the Netherlands", says Nikwi Hoogland (25), one of the initiators. Together with Simone Hanssen (28) and Hong-Lin Stoffels (20), she created Adoptiepedia. The team has since been expanded with Yennah Schenk (20) and Miu Buenen (19). They hope to have the website up and running within six months. "At the moment it is still specifically focused on China, because of our backgrounds", says Nikwi. "Within a year we want to expand further and also serve other countries. Perhaps worldwide. The website is being worked on hard, that takes time. This is a voluntary initiative of Dutch Chinese adoptees. It has been developed with great care.”

Same history

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