August 28, 2008 at 10:22 pm
· Filed under Adoption, Haiti
Director Mansour Masse reports all the children in Holt International care at Holt Fontana Village in Haiti are safe and sound in the wake of Hurricane Gustav. Holt International Senior Executive Dan Lauer spoke by phone with Mansour on Wednesday afternoon, and Mansour said all had survived the storm.
The hurricane hit southwestern Haiti on Tuesday, dumping torrential rains. Mansour said that the effects of the storm have shut down Port-au-Prince. Holt Fontana Village is situated about an hour’s drive from Port-au-Prince, and families adopting children from Holt Fontana Village travel to Haiti to and from the Port-au-Prince International Airport. Several families are due to travel to Port-au-Prince early next week, but none were in Haiti when the hurricane hit. Read the rest of this entry »
Hot diggity dog it’s summer time! Come celebrate children from near and far at Holt’s annual picnic in Lakewood, NJ. All are welcome! There will be a special meet-and-greet session for new and prospective adoptive families to talk with Holt staff about adoption. There will also be fun children’s activities and special programming — for all ages. Bring a friend, a picnic lunch for your family, family photos, and be prepared for a day of fun, food, friends all in the spirit of celebrating adoption.
When: September 6th, 2008 11:00 a.m. — 3:00 p.m. Where: Lakewood, NJ
What to Bring: A friend who is interested in learning more about Holt’s mission.
Volunteers needed! If you want to help out, email Sally Dunbar or call: (888)355.HOLT ext.137.
Get the information you need from the convenience and privacy of your home… log onto a Holt International adoption webinar. Several times each month Holt hosts a live online webinar where one of our adoption workers walks you through the process with helpful audiovisuals and answers questions. You get the most current information about:
• adopting a child through Holt International—costs, time frames, country requirements, etc.
• the benefits and considerations of international adoption
• an opportunity to ask your specific questions
Susie and Sally provide informative webinars and are online to answer your questions during the webinar.
Is it hard to adopt? How long does it take? What countries can I adopt from? What programs does Holt International have? How much does it cost to adopt? These are questions you might have if you’ve thought of adopting a child or have been asked if you’ve already adopted a child—and these are exactly the kinds of questions that Holt staff answer live in our webinars. Read the rest of this entry »
by Gary Gamer, Holt International President and CEO
I am pleased to say that Susan Cox was selected by the Korean Ministry of Foreign Affairs as a member of the Overseas Koreans Honorary Committee for the 60th anniversary of the Republic of South Korea. Forty individuals appointed from the United States and Europe for this Honorary Committee participated in the anniversary festivities in Seoul on August 15. Twenty-seven thousand people attended the public ceremony Friday morning.
Cox, a Korean adoptee and Holt International’s vice president of public policy and advocacy, attended a private dinner for the group at the Blue House hosted by President Lee Myung-bak and the First Lady. The following day included festivities with the Minister of Foreign Affairs and concluded with a gala dinner with the Minister and Members of the General Assembly.
Thank you, Susan, for representing Holt International and intercountry adoption!
(Photo: Susan is on the left with the President and First Lady.)
Food, fun and valuable information about adoption! What more can you ask for at a picnic celebrating adoption? More than 110 people attended Holt International’s annual picnic in the greater Chicago area last Saturday to do just that—picnic together and celebrate adoption. Families from as far away as Iowa, Wisconsin, and Indiana made the trek to Veterans Memorial Park in Westmont, Illinois, to meet with old friends and make new ones.
The mix of families was truly wonderful, from those who adopted their children more than 10 years ago to families who had just received a match to families who were still selecting an agency. Representatives from two of Holt International’s cooperating agencies, The Cradle and Lutheran Social Services, were also there to spend time getting to know Holt’s adoptive families.Activities included a grand potluck, a creative twist to the game of bingo, sack races, piñatas, water balloon tossing, and many other relay games. Adults listened intently to an update of all the latest goings-on in Holt’s adoption programs, including the opening of Holt’s newest adoption program in Nepal. Agency staff representatives were on hand to answer questions.
Be sure to attend a Holt picnic close to you. Click here for a list of remaining 2008 picnics.
We don’t attend our own families’ reunions. There are numerous reasons: timing, location, travel, but the end result is the same—we just don’t go and, frankly, I got over feeling guilty about it years ago.
Every summer, however, we rent an RV, spend a week preparing our camping gear, the food, the clothes and then making the four-hour trek to a state campground on the Oregon Coast for a family reunion of a different flavor. This is a reunion of more than 80 families who have adopted children through Holt International Children’s Services. We come together as separate families with a common bond—the love of our children and the miracle that they are with us. We come together as separate families, but we all claim the same “grandparents,” Harry and Bertha Holt, who began the mission that, decades later, brought our children to us.
We camp in two connecting “loops” within the park, electrical sites on the inside of the loop, tent sites on the outside. Children ride around the loop on bikes, blades, and scooters—anything with wheels. Read the rest of this entry »
Holt International adoptee Kari Banta is one of many young wheelchair athletes that the U.S. Paralympics Committee invited to write an essay on what disabilities mean to them—for a chance to go to Beijing. One of 25 winners from hundreds of entries, Kari will travel with her older brother to the Paralympics, to be held in Beijing in early September, all expenses paid. This is a dream come true for Kari, who was adopted by Julie and Steve Banta at the age of 5 from Thailand. This is her winning essay.
I was born in Thailand and was adopted and moved to Texas when I was 5 years old. I was born with spina bifida, and when I was 3 months old, I had surgery to fix my spinal cord in Chang Mai in northern Thailand. After the surgery, I couldn’t move my legs. The orphanage got me a handmade wheelchair. It was a metal chair with tires that always went flat. I used my wheelchair a lot outside. I crawled inside. I crawled up and down the stairs. I crawled around in the orphanage.
When I came home, I got a new wheelchair with tires that didn’t go flat. I also got braces and a walker. I put them on and walked around the house, school and outside.
A couple of weeks after I came home, I started kindergarten. I didn’t know any English. Read the rest of this entry »
The Holt International program advisor for Africa recently returned from a visit to Holt program sites in Ethiopia and reported on the initial effects of the famine.
“When I arrived in Ethiopia,” said Bruce Dahl, “everything looked green and seemed pretty normal, but I soon found that behind the scenes children are beginning to suffer from food shortages brought on by drought.”
Holt International is in process of partnering with a government-run clinic in Shinshicho that he was visiting. A worker escorted Dahl to a nearby site where the international relief organization Médecins Sans Frontières (Doctors Without Borders) was working to save malnourished children. He was taken inside a building where about 80 mothers had brought one or two of their youngest children, the ones who were suffering most. One young child was so malnourished that a medical worker had inserted an IV into the child’s forehead to supply nutrition—because there was no other viable vein. More mothers with children were being cared for in tents outside the building. Read the rest of this entry »
You can give critically needed items to orphaned, abandoned and vulnerable children through “Gifts of Hope.” Our online catalog lists items and services you can fund to bring hope to children in our projects around the world. These items also make especially meaningful gifts in honor of someone you care about. Give an item from Holt’s “Gifts of Hope,” and we’ll send an acknowledgment card to your spouse, sibling, parent or friend. Imagine… children in Ethiopia receiving milk formula because of a gift given in your name. Wouldn’t you feel honored?
When it comes time to share your spirit of giving, what better way to do so than by helping a vulnerable child. Together, we can make the world a better place for children–one child at a time.
Nurse, farmer’s wife, and mother, Bertha Holt was simply “Grandma” to thousands of children adopted through Holt International, to all of the adoptive families including birth children, and especially to thousands of children who waited and hoped to be adopted.
After Harry Holt died in 1964, Bertha had the grace and courage to continue the work she and her husband had started 8 years earlier.
For the next 36 years, Bertha’s faith inspired the growth and development of Holt International. During her life she was named “Mother of the Year,” logged more than a million flight miles traveling for Holt and advocating for homeless and disabled children, and set a world record for her age group in the 400 meter run.
Bertha Holt passed away at the age of 96 on July 31, 2000. She is buried next to Harry on a hillside at Holt’s Ilsan Center in South Korea, overlooking the facility for homeless and disabled children.
Director Mansour Masse reports all the children in Holt International care at Holt Fontana Village in Haiti are safe and sound in the wake of Hurricane Gustav. Holt International Senior Executive Dan Lauer spoke by phone with Mansour on Wednesday afternoon, and Mansour said all had survived the storm.
