Have you finished your holiday shopping? Or are you more like I am and have barely started?
I've bought a total of two gifts so far. Want to know what they are?
A goat and a fruit tree. For my children.
No, we're not moving into the farming business and I won't be mopping up after a live goat in my house or wondering how to keep a fruit tree alive until spring. I've bought these items from Plan Canada's Gifts of Hope. The real goat and fruit tree will be delivered to a family in need that will use these ethical and valuable gifts to sustain and improve life for themselves. Something my children never have to consider in their world of plenty.
Last year, Huzbo and I felt a real sense of frustration when Christmas began to approach and we wondered what to get our children as gifts. They have EVERYTHING. Not just everything they need, but almost everything that they want, as well. We felt guilty that so many families in other parts of the world have none of the things that our children take for granted in their everyday lives — food, shelter, education, clean water — our children had only a high-level awareness of how different families in developing countries live. We wanted to find a way to give our kids an understanding of these struggling families that didn't come simply from us preaching to them — we all know where those speeches end up!
In my search to find something to teach my children about the gift of giving, I found Plan Canada. Last year, we gave our children Plan Canada gift certificates from us AND from Santa. We also asked some family members to spend half of what they normally would on a gift for our kids and spend the other half on a gift certificate that our children could use to choose a gift with a purpose that they wanted to give from the extensive online catalogue of unique ethical gifts, some priced as low as $10. In doing so, each of the gift-giving trifecta was represented to our children — parents, Santa and our extended family stood united in the desire to give an important gift to two young people that already have everything.
Our children loved the experience and we loved having purposeful conversations with them to aid them in choosing items that would most benefit the developing families that the items would go to, so I jumped at the opportunity to write about this program this year.
The Plan Canada Gifts of Hope are an excellent choice for everyone on your list, but a must for those that already have everything, or, are hard to buy for. Do those children or adults really need some trinket or novelty item that they will probably forget about a few days after unwrapping it?
My children still have everything they want or need again this year. Oh sure, they THINK they want just about everything in the latest toy or electronic store flyers, but they have far too much of that stuff already. What they don't know they want yet is the joy of giving. What better way to experience the joy of giving than to give an actual tangible ethical gift of hope — not just a donation of money — that will go so far to improve somebody's life? There can't be any greater gift than that.
So, for Christmas this year, my children will have under their Christmas tree a fruit tree and a goat, to give to a family that needs these items to sustain and improve their quality of life. Goats are a precious commodity — they produce nourishing milk to drink, but they also produce offspring that can be sold as a source of income. It's a gift that keeps on giving, so to speak. Plan Canada invests my gift money directly to a goat program in a country like Uganda, where the goats are born and given directly to communities in the area, while also providing training to the recipient for raising and breeding goats. Fruit trees are the same. They bear fruit that can be eaten for necessary vitamins and minerals, or the extra fruit can be sold.
Now, I'm sure some of you more jaded holiday shoppers are thinking "Oh boy, here we go again. Always during the holidays, there are so many charities asking for donations!" Well, you're right. Sort of. These developing nations with communities and families DO need our help, and not just now, but all year. When you buy many of the ethical gifts available from Plan Canada, your gift DOES keep on giving! If you have doubts that your money actually buys a goat, have a look at this quick video:
When you buy a Gift of Hope, you can receive a free greeting card, completed with your message, and sent directly to you or your gift recipient to notify them of your special present. Last year, we wrapped them and put them under the tree and it was a heartwarming moment to watch our children read the cards from us and Santa and see their smile spread when they realized that THEY had actually given a gift, simply by opening a gift!
If you'd like a longer-lasting reminder for your recipient to have to feel good about their Gift of Hope, Plan Canada also offers a selection of merchandise that can be added to your order such as jewellery, apparel and paper items. I own the gorgeous paper necklace hand-made by African women, and I get compliments on it every time I wear it!
So what are you waiting for? You don't even have to drive to the mall, fight for a parking spot, elbow through the crowds and browse a hundred stores searching for just the right gift that will make your person-who-has-everything smile.
What is the greatest gift you can give someone this holiday season? Hope.
This is proudly sponsored by our friends at Plan Canada.
www.plancanada.ca/giftsofhope
In 2009, I travelled to South Africa, filled with the barely-contained excitement of becoming a mother and meeting my daughter for the first time. What I did not anticipate was returning home with two loves — my daughter, of course — and Mr. Nelson Mandela. Prior to considering adoption in South Africa, I had a general knowledge of who Nelson Mandela was and why he was famous. What I didn't understand until travelling to South Africa was what he meant not only to South Africans, but to freedom fighters, peace activists and everyday humans around the globe.
In 1948, apartheid rule came into power in South Africa. The Afrikaans term meaning "apartness" was a legal political system for racial segregation, oppression and demoralization. As a 40-year old man, Nelson Mandela bristled at the concept of blacks and non-whites being stripped of political and economic rights and power and attempted to work peacefully to abolish apartheid until 1961, when he felt it necessary to start a military wing to counteract the increasing military action being taken against his work. Mandiba, as many South African citizens refer to him, spent 27 years in jail, most of them at Robben Island prison in a six-foot-wide cell where he slept on the floor, or doing blindingly hard labour daily in a quarry. I remember watching on TV in 1989 with the entire world as he walked out of prison and raised his fist in a victorious salute. His political party, the African National Congress, won the next election on April 27, 1994, when all men and women of legal voting age, not just ones with white skin, were able to cast their ballot. Pause for a moment to consider — in 1994, I was twenty four years old. I could not imagine casting my ballot in an election where my non-white friends, family or coworkers could do nothing but watch. This is not ancient history studied in school — this was during MY generation. Naturally, Mandela was the first black president of South Africa and ruled for five years of very trying times.
After leaving political office, he focused on his philanthropic foundation, including working on AIDS-awareness and education, as South Africa has been devastated by the disease. He retired from public life in 2004, showing his usual good humour in his goodbye statement of "Don't call me, I'll call you."
What you can't read or can't know is the feeling of seeing his smiling or stern or pensive face looking at you from somewhere, almost everywhere you go in South Africa. To use the term "hero" would not be doing him justice, nor adequately describing the love that South Africa as a nation feels for this ordinary man who accomplished extraordinary feats. While he brought racial integration to his country and returned the rights of all people to those who had had them stolen, he also gave a much more powerful gift to South Africa and the world - hope. Apartheid not only stripped the non-white population in South Africa from being able to vote or hold public office, or swim at the same beaches as whites, it scratched at their souls, and "Tata" — father, in Mandela's native language — restored those souls with his soothing balm of confident assurance that one day, he and all of the black men and women of South Africa, would have their rights restored, as they did.
As a man wrongly imprisoned for a third of his life at the time of his release, he could have very easily become a bitter, resentful, retaliatory man. Instead, he led his country through a truth and reconciliation process that attempted to heal very deep wounds but to also strive towards his dream of creating a "rainbow nation" that would have all colours of people living in harmony and love.
When we were in South Africa, we had the pleasure of spending a week in Cape Town. In addition to the unparalleled geographic beauty and wonders of that area, we had the opportunity to visit Robben Island. I am rarely at a loss for words, but the intensity of the experience — even four years later — seems indescribable. We toured the prison, saw his cell, stood in the quarry where many men went blind from sunlight reflecting off the white rocks. The majority of people cannot fathom the hardship of being captive, even for a crime they did commit, let alone the non-crime of expecting to have the same rights as other humans.
Nelson Mandela showed the world what dignity, grace, love, and commitment mean. My daughter has known from a very young age that Mr. Mandela is the most special of men to South Africa, and she knows why. I owe that much to her, and to Mandiba.
I want her to always know that he is more than a hero — he was a human with human flaws, but he refused to accept something that was not right, despite the price he had to pay for that refusal.
I can only hope my daughter will take Mr. Mandela's examples and use them as examples of who she wants to become. It holds a special place in my family's heart that a man so revered all over the world, shares the birthplace of our daughter.
We cried today in my house when we heard the news. My beautiful, strong Zulu princess and I, we cried together. My daughter did not cry because I was crying — she loves Nelson Mandela probably more than I do because she identifies with so much more of his struggles in life than I do. So, we held each other and grieved as a family. We cried for the loss of a guiding light, not only for her birth country, but for the world. We cried for the citizens of her birth country, who have lost the man, but hopefully not the spirit, of their fearless freedom warrior. We cried for the uncertainty of South Africa in his absence, with the hopes that they will continue to model his love, peace and acceptance. We cried for ourselves, knowing that we could never have done what he did, and knowing we could have never repaid him for it. Then, we agreed that what Nelson Mandela really would have wanted from us was an impish grin and a twinkling eye as we celebrated the legacy of his life.
As my incredibly perceptive little girl said through her tears: "I will miss him so very much."
Tata, your long walk to freedom has finally ended.
Thank you.
As November and Adoption Awareness Month fade from our minds and we begin to shift our excited focus towards a holiday season spent with our families, I want to bring your attention to something really heart-stopping:
In Canada, there are nearly 30,000 children available for adoption.
That's 30,000 children with NO permanent family to celebrate their holidays with.
I don't know about you, but I could and would toss the presents and holiday food out the window if I had to choose between them and having my family with me for the holidays.
A recent study commissioned by the Dave Thomas Foundation for Adoption in Canada — the first ever of its kind in this country — confirmed this stunning fact:
If only 0.4% of Canadians who have considered adoption from foster care would take the next step and move forward with adopting a child, then EVERY SINGLE CHILD currently in Canada's foster care system would have a permanent family.
Mind-blowing.
I recently had the pleasurable honour of speaking with Rita Soronen, President and CEO of the Dave Thomas Foundation for Adoption, and she had some profound insights into foster adoption. The Foundation focuses a good amount of effort on education and awareness,but their primary focus is dedicated to helping existing domestic child welfare agencies with finding permanent families for children currently in foster care. The "Wendy's Wonderful Kids" program provides funds to existing Canadian agencies to fund the in-house hire, salary and support of an adoption recruiter who works with a smaller caseload of waiting children than other social workers do, to advocate on behalf of the children for a family to adopt them, as well as stay in frequent communication with the children and their existing networks of foster families, teachers, etc. Sadly, the current public social services system is inundated with overflowing caseloads, making it difficult for regular social workers to spend the amount of time and energy that they'd like to on each individual child in need, particularly those with developmental, physical or emotional challenges. Wendy's Wonderful Kids' recruiters focus on children that may have been deemed "unadoptable" in order to find these children families before they age-out of the child welfare system at age 18, when they are expected to function as adults, yet may not have had the opportunities to build the skills required for those expectations, nor have the support system available to assist them as they struggle to cope without even a foster family or social worker. As Ms. Soronen stated in our conversation, you don't stop needing a family and a support team once you turn eighteen. She is so right. Family is forever and I can't imagine what I would do without my parents, even at my age.
The program is currently operating in five provinces of Canada, with strategic plans to move into all provinces as their non-profit budget allows. Since its inception in 2006, the program has had 480 children on its caseload, with approximately 312 of them matched and 149 of those in finalized adoptions.
I asked Ms. Soronen what she felt was the biggest misconception Canadians (and Americans) may have about foster adoption, and her words were profound. She shared her feeling that society as a whole has a very negative attitude about tweens and teenagers. When was the last time you heard the parent of a teenager discuss teenagers without rolling their eyes and saying "Teenagers!" in a negative way? This negative attitude towards youth is inaccurate, because it represents an unrealistic expectation of teens who are simply learning to function independently of their parents and often try out different behaviors and speech patterns in order to better-prepare themselves for adulthood. Sadly, it's these seemingly moody or unpredictable behaviors that apparently concern parents the most. Add to these developmentally-expected adolescent behaviors the difficult life circumstances that many children in foster care have endured prior to being placed in care, and you have a child in a teen's body trying to cope with a burden that they are ill-equipped to deal with, through no fault of their own.
In short — teens in general get a bad rap for being what they should be, and adolescents in foster care even more so.
The report on adoption attitudes in Canada also outlines that there is a misconception that children in foster care are there through some fault of their own — criminal behavior, addictions, violence — when really, what is often the case is that the biological parents have subjected these children to their adult issues, in turn motivating child welfare agencies to remove the children from these traumatic homes for their own protection. The child is never to blame for being in care. More importantly, we also need to understand that these children are not to blame for how they cope with these tragic life circumstances. Often, the child's flight-or-fight response is so highly tuned to deal with these conditions that the child will behave in a hostile, depressive, aggressive or rejecting manner, when really they are simply trying to avoid getting hurt again emotionally and/or physically. Sometimes their trauma, loss and grief is more than they know how to handle.
These are not "bad" kids, and the values of the Dave Thomas Foundation reflect this:
Every child deserves to live in a safe, loving, and permanent family.
No child should linger in foster care or leave the system at age 18 without a permanent family of his or her own.
Every child is adoptable.
The most astounding revelation of the report shows that huge numbers of Canadians have thought about foster adoption, yet have not moved past thinking about it to act on it. Yes, children in foster care have special needs, yet society still erroneously seems to think that these special needs should be handled by somebody else.
I challenge this line of thinking that I, too, have suffered from in the past. In our own personal adoption journey, Huzbo and I also considered foster adoption, but ultimately felt that knowing prior to adoption that a child had an emotional, behavioral or physical challenge (or even all three) was too daunting for us to take on. We naively thought that adopting internationally was perhaps a way to avoid taking on special needs.
Boy, were we mistaken.
Quite simply, I firmly believe now that EVERY child who has been adopted has special needs. They may be invisible emotional needs, but they are always there from the core trauma hard-wired into the brains of children who have lost their birth parents.
In addition, even biological children are currently being diagnosed in record numbers with medical conditions such as ADD/ADHD, autism, allergies, etc. All of them have special needs that simply require specific attention. Not additional attention. Not harder-to-love-them attention. Just attention directed towards these needs. How many parents of biological kids would say "Boy, if I knew then that my child was going to end up with autism/ADHD/allergies, I wouldn't have had him or her!" That's right — nobody. So why do we feel it's ok to think that way about children in foster care? It's not. Children in foster care are no different and no more challenging. Parenting is a challenging business, no matter how easygoing and well-behaved your child might be. Yet the rewards always seem to outweigh the challenges and foster children need a family to share their love with too.
If you are one of those Canadians who has considered foster adoption but has been afraid to take the next steps, I urge you to contact Dave Thomas Foundation, or at least visit their website to find out more information. It is overflowing with helpful and informative resources for you to educate yourself about foster adoption. Your questions are valid and the best way to feel better about moving towards foster adoption is to get all the information you can. You may just find that many of your concerns or fears are completely unfounded!
If you feel that foster adoption may never be the right choice for you, there are still ways to help! Please visit the Dave Thomas Foundation website for ways that you can help to help support the vital work that the foundation is doing for children who need a permanent family.
Now, before you head out to the mall to load up on presents and delicious holiday foods to share with YOUR family and children, have a look at this video and think about what family means to you. Chances are, it means even more to the children who don't have one.
"These children aren't someone else's responsibility, they are our responsibility." —Dave Thomas
Printer-friendly version