from hope to reality

Announcement about the annual Guatoberfest, to be held in Myrtle Beach, SC, this October. All adoptive families are welcome. Check out their website. (more…)

Carolina Hope has achieved 1-year temporary Hague accreditation through the Council on Accreditation. This status permits Carolina Hope to conduct adoptions from all Hague countries and to do Hague-approved South Carolina adoption homestudies.

Over at the conservative website Townhall.com, John Stossel (formerly of 20/20) writes an eyebrow-raising piece called USA Makes Adoption Harder. I want to be very clear that some of Stossel’s statements make me uncomfortable, and this is not an endorsement of Stossel’s article. But much of what he says is a simple reality, however unpopular [...]

Yes, it’s old news now (six-days old!), but I wanted to pass along this notice from U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services about the current status of Guatemala adoptions and adoption law. This press release is available from the USCIS website as a PDF.
USCIS Update
January 25, 2008
USCIS ANNOUNCES NEW GUATEMALAN ADOPTION LEGISLATION
Intercountry Adoptions Under the Hague [...]

On January 11 the U.S. Department of State issued a warning (dated January 9) about the status of Guatemala adoptions. (As mentioned in a previous post, Carolina Hope has put its Guatemala adoption program on hold pending new standardized procedures for adoptions in Guatemala. Of course, cases registered under the old system are still being [...]

Today the Joint Council on International Children’s Services (JCICS) issued an update regarding its Guatemala 5000 initiative:

Joint Council Update
Program: International Relations Initiative
Date: January 14, 2008
Regarding: Guatemala 5000
Dear Colleagues,
As part of our ongoing Guatemala 5000 Initiative, Joint Council has maintained dialogue with USDOS and USCIS and met with them most recently on January 7 and again [...]

Chris and Lindsey Wheeler, one of Carolina Hope’s families, are raising money for their Guatemala adoption by selling some über-cool t-shirts at ellieDub.com: Mission Tailored Clothing.
I’ve known about the site for a couple weeks, but I didn’t realize that this was a Carolina Hope family. When I found out, I decided to run a blog [...]

This morning the Joint Council on International Children’s Services issued the following announcement about newly proposed adoption legislation in the Guatemalan congress. Although this legislation hasn’t passed, this is a good step in the right direction, and it’s encouraging to adoption agencies and adoptive families. More importantly, it’s good news for Guatemalan children in need [...]

The Joint Council on International Children’s Services has posted copies of the letters sent by the U.S. Congress to Guatemalan President Oscar Berger and to UNICEF. If you participated in lobbying your congressmen to sign the letters, thank you. The announcement (and link) from JCICS are below.
Dear Colleagues,
Joint Council has posted copies online of the [...]

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:: posted by dan ::

This morning, Thomas DiFilipo, President of JCICS, sent out this update of the Guatemala 5000 initiative. (I’ve previously blogged about this initiative here and here.)

Joint Council Update
Program: International Relations Initiative
Date: October 31, 2007
Regarding: U.S. Congressional Letters – 203 Signatures
Dear Friends and Colleagues,
Through our collective efforts, the Guatemala 5000 Initiative has resulted in 203 Members of [...]

Today Thomas J DiFilipo of JCICS released an update on the Guatemala 5000 initiative, an effort to organize families with a stake or interest in Guatemala adoptions - or in child welfare generally - to advocate for a humane process while Guatemala transitions to a new adoption law. At present, there is no certainty

Recently the Guatemalan Congress approved sweeping changes to the international adoption system in their country. The bill - as passed - had no provision for grandfathering current cases, and (without such a grandfather clause) would certainly interfere with many adoptions that have already begun. The bill is now in committee, and amendments are being proposed, [...]

The Guatemalan Forever Families Network (GFFN) of North Carolina has announced the following event, open for all families whose lives are touched by the adoption of a child from Guatemala:

!! Meet & Greet Fiesta !!
Our first event will be held on September 22, 2007 at Lake Johnson in Raleigh, NC.
You can come as early and [...]

Back on August 8 I wrote a post about David Esaú, a baby boy in Guatemala who is waiting to be adopted. David has been waiting for more than 5 months, and while adoptive families are eager for referrals of girls or infant boys, children like David keep getting older, and their chances of being [...]

Two days ago I posted about an adoption interview/debate on Al Jazeera’s English network. This post is about the second half of that interview with Tom DiFilipo, President and CEO of the Joint Council on International Children’s Services (JCICS), and Louise Melville, a Care and Protection Adviser for Save The Children.
You can watch the [...]

The English wing of the Arab news network Al Jazeera produced a piece last month about international adoption on their “Inside Story” program: “Guatemala Adoption Scandal” aired on 13 August 2007. The program featured two interviewees who went head-to-head on inter-country adoption: Tom DiFilipo, President and CEO of the Joint Council on International Children’s Services [...]

One of the ways that Carolina Hope seeks homes for orphans from Guatemala is through photolisting - that is, placing an orphan’s photo and name (along with a few other pieces of information) on our website and at another photolisting website, RainbowKids.com. I’ll post more about photolisting at some other time (it’s a controversial practice), [...]

The Joint Council on International Children’s Services has issued the following notice about the second DNA test now being required for children adopted from Guatemala. As the notice states, the new requirement will be implemented for cases submitted to the U.S. Embassy in Guatemala on or after August 6, 2007.
This notice answers some of the [...]

[This post was updated August 2, 2007. The update appears at the end of the original text.]
The U.S. Embassy in Guatemala City is introducing a second DNA test, this one to be done before a visa will be issued to the adopted child. This child’s DNA sample will be sent to the U.S. lab that [...]