Sunday, May 24, 2015

Growing Up in Pictures

Children grow and change so fast and the Russian children directly affected by the ban on US-Russian adoptions have grown and changed a great deal since the ban was signed into law in 2012.

2012

2015

The Russian Federation maintains a database of children available for adoption that is occasionally updated with new photographs and, for many of the prospective adoptive parents also caught in the ban, the database photographs are the only remaining connection to the children they love and continue to think, and worry, about every day.

2012

2015
Finding an updated photograph on the database is a heart-stopping experience. Overwhelming joy and sorrow.

2012

2015
The children, however, receive no updates. We know that when we were with them they were told by their caretakers and social workers that we would come back and take them home and be their parents. We don't know what they were told when we didn't come back.

2012

2015

June 1st, 2015 is International Children's Day. Please join Parents United for Russian Orphans this week in reminding the US government that parents are more important than politics and that there at least 30 children, whose prospective parents still desperately want to adopt them, waiting, and wondering, in Russian orphanages today.


2012
2014