Orphans of the World

FROM: Beth Mash

What NEED does this meet?
As it stands now, an agency adoption of a child in Eastern Europe or Asia is usually anywhere from $20,000 (Asia) to $35,000 or more (Russia). The adoption angencies give dinky discounts for the adoption of older children, but not enough of a discount to actually help very many children find new homes. Because the agencies control the referral process, it is difficult for adoptive parents to arrange an adoption without paying huge fees. There are already some small regional/local photolisting services in various parts of the world, but why not let the kids over the age of 10 photolist themselves. Many of the urban/suburban orphanages are within walking distance of an internet cafe, and some of the orphanages are already online.

Even in the U.S., where child protective services is supposed to photolist all of the waiting kids, they never actually get around to it. There are perhaps 3 to 5000 kids photolisted at the most, although the number of kids legally free for adoption is well into six figures.

Obviously, there are some privacy concerns that have to be addressed with any photolisting, but those issues have been worked out with the photolistings that are up and running now.

It would be great to have a world-wide photolisting that would not be controlled by any one agency.

What is the APPROACH?
One worldwide photolisting vs. current patchwork of hard-to-find websites which are often out of date. Many photolistings currently in place treat the photolisted children as the property of the listing agency. If you want to adopt Child X, you MUST you the expensive services of Agency Y.

What are the BENEFITS to people?
All photolisted orphans under one website "roof" with a search function that searches through all available orphans simultaneously.

What is the COMPETITION?
There is now a more or less nationwide USA photolisting, BUT I believe that children are only listed there after they have been listed for a long time on their individual state photolisting site (this may vary from state to state.) As I stated previously, the total number of children on this site is a small fraction of the number who are "eligible" for listing.

Additionally, the social workers in each jurisdiction are gatekeepers for the government photolistings. If a child is in foster care, and becomes free for adoption, he will be photolisted IF AND ONLY IF his social worker gets around to it. Sadly, many foster parents will tell you that they have worked with social workers and local child protective services offices where photolisting the available children is NOT a priority. (As long as the child is NOT adopted, the local CPS office continues to receive federal funding for the child, which operates as a conflict of interest.)

What BUDGET & LOGISTICS are required?
I don't have any idea.