Former foster kid overcame odds, with help from many friends, to earn law degree

By Donna St. George

Washington Post Staff Writer

Friday, May 7, 2010; B01

When Jelani Freeman came home after school one day, his mother was gone. Eight years old, he waited, realizing as the hours passed that she would not be back. She was mentally ill and in need of treatment. His father was in prison.

"I just knew that was it," he recalled.

By the next afternoon, social workers were involved. So began a way of life that he came to know as foster care, a world of in-betweens and stopgaps that brought six moves and inevitable questions about how to get beyond hurt and want and poverty.

On Saturday, against the odds, Freeman will graduate from Howard University Law School, where he has told few of his professors how far he came just to take a seat.......

To read the full article, click here:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/05/06/AR2010050606345_pf.html

Orphan Sunday Campaign on a Roll!

With the 2011 Orphan Sunday campaign just underway, myriad events are already brewing. Across the U.S, plans are being laid for city-wide concerts and multi-church gatherings….church services and Sunday School classes…more. Individual families making plans, too, including the Orphan’s Table meal, along with prayer and discussion.

Like never before, the vision is starting to spread around the world, too. The new Russian language website recently launched for Ukraine and Russia.

Additional new-language sites are in the works, too. And local campaigns are starting up from the Philippines to Romania to Kenya.

Orphan Sunday is a chance for anyone to spread the vision of God’s love for the fatherless in a church, community or family! Harness the many RESOURCES and easy-to-use EVENT IDEAS on the Orphan Sunday website, and then post your plans on the EVENT MAP!

For more information visit http://www.orphansunday.org/. 

RUN, BECAUSE THEY CAN’T.

What if you couldn’t run, not even if your life depended on it?  Running from human trafficking is not as simple as it seems –

mental manipulation, physical bondage and threats keep Chicago victims from finding freedom.

Victims may not be able to run, but you can.  By joining Traffick Free in the Freedom Run 5k, you are telling Chicago that human trafficking is not acceptable in our city. You are contributing to efforts to help free the supply and end the demand. You can do something about human trafficking. Join the Freedom Run 5k on 9.10.11. A few hours of your day will make a citywide impact.

SIGN UP NOW AT WWW.TRAFFICKFREE.ORG/5K

Stop Traffick. Start Running.

Saturday, Sept. 10, 2011

7:30 a.m. - 10:30 a.m.

Diversey Harbor, Chicago, IL

$25 registration

$35 with t-shirt

Group discounts available

Adoption Basics for the Classroom: Expert advice on how to educate educators

You have been talking to your child about adoption since he came home. But what about the time he spends at school? What does his teacher know about adoption? About birth parents? Does she know how to help him answer why he doesn't look like his mom?

Join Debbie Riley, the Chief Executive Officer of The Center for Adoption Support and Education, Inc. (C.A.S.E.), as she discusses how adoptive parents can educate the educators.

This webinar will help you:

* Talk to teachers about creating an adoption-sensitive environment

* Educate teachers on managing discussions about adoption in school

* Discover how much of your child's story to share

* Learn how to handle some standard school projects (family trees, baby pictures)

Your purchase confirmation email will include a link to submit questions to Ms. Riley.

This webinar will not be available for purchase after the event. You will only receive access to the recorded version if you register for the live event.

Thursday, September 22, 2011

7:00 - 8:00 PM Central Time

Q & A: 8:00 - 8:30 PM Central Time

(Start Time: 7:00PM Central, 8:00PM Eastern, 5:00PM Pacific)

Join the conversation on Twitter #abcwebinar

To register, go to http://www.adoptionlearningpartners.org/webinars/adoption-basics-classroom.cfm?utm_source=ABCJCICS1&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=ABCJCICSBLAST1

Debbie B. Riley is the Chief Executive Officer of The Center for Adoption Support and Education, Inc. (C.A.S.E.), an independent pre and post-adoption organization in the Baltimore-Washington area and co-author of the book, Beneath the Mask: Understanding Adopted Teens.

Since 1993, she has focused exclusively on the field of adoption, creating pre- and post-adoption programs in the Washington, D.C. metropolitan area; offering specialized counseling services to adopted children, teens, adults and adoptive families; and promoting health education, child advocacy and public policy development. Most recently, Ms. Riley leads the national initiative to create training standards for an adoption-competent certification for mental health providers.

Adoption Music

Becky Wright is an award-winning Christian singer/songwriter and Nashville recording artist from Oklahoma. In May 2008 she was named "Female Songwriter of the Year" at the Agape Fest in Texas. A gifted worship leader and conference speaker as well, Becky performs across the USA at churches, festivals, homeless shelters, and for adoption events.  Singing and writing since childhood, her worldwide acclaim began with the writing of “Child of My Heart”, an adoption song which won her the title “Duo of the Year” and a Top 5 Female Horizon Award at the 2006 Agape Fest (TX).  The song was recorded in Nashville with Tommy Brandt, CCMA (Christian Country Music Association) Male Vocalist & Entertainer of the Year, and is now used by adoption and related organizations such as the Oklahoma Department of Human Services (Adoption Services), Arkansas Adoption Coalition, Gift for a Child, ATTACH.org, and others.  For more information about Becky's music, her orphan & adoption advocacy projects and conference/concert schedule, visit http://www.beckywrightsongs.com/. 

International Justice Mission Benefit in Chicago

CHICAGO BENEFIT DINNER

Saturday, October 22, 2011

Reception at 6:30 pm

Dinner and Program at 7 pm

Chicago Marriott Downtown

$100 per person

Business or Cocktail Attire

RSVP by October 11, 2011

www.ijm.org/benefits

BECOME A JUSTICE CHAMPION

* Host a table: Purchase 10 tickets
* Recruit a table: Fill 10 seats
* Sponsor the event: Multiple sponsorship levels available

For more information, contact IJM: events@ijm.org or 703.740.9923

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Featured Speaker: Gary A. Haugen, IJM President and CEO

Haugen, a graduate of Harvard University and the University of Chicago Law School, leads IJM’s global casework and groundbreaking structural transformation of public justice systems worldwide. Before founding IJM, he worked in the Civil Rights Division of the U.S. Department of Justice and served as Officer-in-Charge of the United Nations’ genocide investigation in Rwanda.

Mila's Story

At the age of 12, Mila+ was trafficked into prostitution in a Manila bar. Today, she is thriving in a safe and loving aftercare home. At the benefit, hear how IJM was able to rescue her, and other stories of freedom made possible by people like you.

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Host Committee

Chairpersons

Elizabeth and Eric Ha

Bonnie and Jay Knobloch

Mark Johnson

Teresa Nortillo

Cora Passis

Jennifer and Jim Quigley

Carole Wineman

Tiffany and Jason Wright

Webinar: Transracial Adoption: Becoming a Multicultural/Multiracial Family

Alliance Webinar Series

The Christian Alliance for Orphans Webinar Series is designed to help individuals like you create and grow effective adoption, foster care and global orphan ministry in local churches.

You're Invited....
Date: Wednesday, August 31, 2011 Time: 1:00 PM Central
Topic: Transracial Adoption: Becoming a Multicultural/Multiracial Family

Host Church: Bethlehem Baptist Church


Presenters: Maridel Sandberg, Bethlehem Baptist Church & Jaclyn Skalnik, Bethany Christian Church

This webinar will highlight both joys and challenges of expanding a family through trans-racial adoption—including social understandings of race, ethnicity, nationality and culture. We will explore both positive and difficult issues related to the life-long consequences of adoption, and offer tangible suggestions to help a church community embrace and support multi-racial families.

Each 60-minute webinar in this series will give local advocates access to the knowledge and experience of top Alliance member churches and organizations nationwide, covering key topics on adoption, foster care and/or global orphan care. Every webinar will be hosted by a local church orphan ministry and co-presented by one or more national experts on the subject matter. This pairing will deliver a combination of specialist information and resources alongside a “here’s how it works in a real church” perspective.

For more information and to register, visit http://www.christianalliancefororphans.org/resources/webinars/

Run for Chicago Kids in the Chicago Half Marathon or 5K

September 11, 2011

When you join Team LYDIA, you can reach your personal fitness goals while standing up for children of Chicago who need your support through your pledges and donations to LYDIA. Join us by participating in the Chicago Half Marathon or 5K (official Team LYDIA race) or another area race of your choice.

Sign-up with a friend, family member or co-worker since it’s always easier to stay motivated when training with a buddy!

3 SIMPLE STEPS:

First, register for the Chicago Half Marathon & 5K (or another race of your choice) on the race website. Our Chicago Half Marathon & 5K coupon code for a $5 discount is: CHMLHA11 (case sensitive) please write this down and use when you register for the race.

Then, sign-up for Team LYDIA and create your own fundraising page (it's free).

Participate in the race to help change lives of kids in Chicago!

For more information, to register or to donate/sponsor a runner, visit http://www.lydiahome.org/Event.aspx?site_id=10086&event_id=225199

Illinois Town Hall Meeting to Combat Human Trafficking

Sponsored by International Justice Mission

Join IJM inChicago on September 19 to stand up for victims of modern-day slavery – and show your elected policymakers that Illinois is passionate about fighting trafficking at home and abroad.

Featured Speakers:

•U.S. Congressman Peter Roskam, Illinois District 6


•Holly Burkhalter, International Justice Mission


•Lynne Hybels, Willow Creek Community Church



Invited Speakers:

•Senator Dick Durbin, United States Senate


•Senator Mark Steven Kirk , United States Senate

Event Details

September 19, 2011

7:00 p.m.

Park Community Church

1001 N Crosby

Chicago, IL 60610

Event Co-Sponsors include: TraffickFree, PROMISE, STOP-IT, Chicago Alliance Against Sexual Exploitation (CAASE), the Dreamcatcher Foundation.


If you have any questions about the event, feel free to visit http://www.ijm.org/illinois-town-hall.
If you would like to carpool together from Chicago's western suburbs, contact Dina at vcministry127@gmail.com.

Step Forward for Orphans March

Step Forward for Orphans March from Both Ends Burning on Vimeo.


In a powerful statement of solidarity, key leaders of international adoption and members of their organizations have joined forces to participate in the "Step Forward for Orphans March," a unified event designed to bring global awareness to the current dysfunctional adoption system.

Parents who have been waiting for their adopted children to come home, adoption experts and advocates, and families who wish to provide a permanent home for a child in need will convene on August 26 in Washington, D.C. for the "Step Forward for Orphans March."

Visit bothendsburning.org for more information.

Louisville Courier on Adoption 2.0

Courier-Journal.com

Adoption 2.0

Posted on May 20, 2011 by Peter Smith

 

Cristi Slate, whose biological parents adopted eight children from Russia, might seem to be a natural spokeswoman for the burgeoning emphasis on adoption among evangelical Christians.

And she is — but not just in the familiar sense of Americans bringing home adopted children from overseas.
She’s also promoting a program to support adoptions of Russian and other orphans by families within their home countries.

"Americans coming in and putting in their programs is not the best thing," she said last week during a national conference, the Christian Alliance for Orphans Summit, that drew about 1,500 people at Southeast Christian Church in Louisville. It often leaves "nationals feeling disrespected," said Slate, grants manager for Doorways to Hope, which has supported such things as repairs and expansions to adoptive families’ homes in Ukraine.
She wasn’t alone. At the same conference workshop, others spoke up from countries as diverse as Ukraine and Uganda about efforts to recruit adoptive parents.  Call it Adoption 2.0.

As we reported earlier this year, evangelical churches in Louisville and elsewhere in the United States have increasingly called on members to take care of orphans through adoption and other means. They see this as fulfilling two biblical mandates — to take care of the needy and to evangelize.

But the movement has expanded, and not just in promoting efforts to have children adopted by families in their home countries. It’s also emphasizing the need for foster parents in the United States itself, and on adopting children who have experienced such things as homelessness, disease, disability and exploitation.

“Early on, a lot of the movement was adoption cheerleading, kind of emphasizing the beautiful elements of adoption without also emphasizing the costliness of it,” said Jedd Medefind, president of the Christian Alliance for Orphans. “The movement is maturing.” Some of the titles at the workshops at this year’s Orphans Summit reflect the change: “The Plight of the Trafficked Orphan”; “Street Children in America”; “Attachment and Trauma”; “Adopting and Advocating for Children with HIV”; “Adopting the Deaf Child.”

The summit is the organization’s seventh annual conference. The first, Medefind said, drew 38 people.
Neither Medefind nor anyone else in this evangelical adoption movement have figures on how many adoptions it has promoted.

But its growth is evident in the current size of such conferences and orphan-awareness church activities.
International adoptions have stirred controversy, and not just when evangelical Christians are involved, because people in some poorer countries view it as an imperialist insult to their culture.
But “to me, there is no controversy,” said Ruslan Maliuta of the group Ukraine Without Orphans. “I approach it from a child’s perspective. It is very controversial when you’re talking about politics, when you’re talking about economic issues. But when you see a child that needs a family, … if there is no such home in country, I don’t care where that family comes from as long as they provide a permanent home for that child.”

Yet Maliuta’s group works extensively to encourage Ukrainian churches to adopt children.
In the past, they saw adoption as "sending kids abroad to rich Americans," he said. "But it has changed.”
More and more Ukrainian Christians are adopting, recognizing the act as “a spiritual concept," he said. There was a recent breakthrough when a couple adopted an HIV-positive child, he said.

In Uganda, despite extensive poverty, a church movement has prompted 13 in-country adoptions in the past eight months — a modest but promising start, according to Kenneth Rwego, a representative of the Loving Hearts Babies Home in Kampala. People’s “hearts were really moved” to get involved, he said.

The United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) estimates there are 163 million children worldwide who have lost one or both parents, but that figure doesn’t break out how many are actually eligible for adoption.
The Convention on the Rights of the Child, approved by the U.N. in 1990, emphasizes putting the best interests of a child first, including the right to stay with family if possible, and having a firm legal structure to determine if no family that can safely care for him or her.

The convention says international adoption is an option but puts priority on finding solutions in the child’s home country and on the "desirability of continuity in a child’s upbringing and to the child’s ethnic, religious, cultural and linguistic background."

Medefind said the Christian faith, which teaches that God "pursued us when we were destitute and alone," offers a model for adoption. But, he added: "Regardless of your faith, when you come face to face with the needs of a child without a mother or father, that conscience within you cries out, ‘This is not right.’"

Together for Adoption Conference 2011

Together for Adoption:  Providing gospel-centered resources to mobilize the church for global orphan care. 

http://www.togetherforadoption.org/

As written in Reclaiming Adoption: Missional Living Through the Rediscovery of Abba Father, “To live missionally means to live each waking moment in light of the gospel so that it increasingly affects every part of our lives for the glory of God’s grace in our fallen world” (p 17). James 1:27 tells us that the practice of true religion necessarily involves caring for orphans in their distress. Therefore, to live missionally means that the Gospel is increasingly moving and empowering us to care for those who live on the razor-sharp edge of our world’s brokenness. Whether we are conscious of it or not, the Gospel is at the center of missional living and the evangelical orphan care movement.

Join us October 21-22 in Phoenix, AZ for Together for Adoption Conference 2011. Over 1,200 people will gather together at Redemption Church (Gilbert Campus) to explore the theme Missional Living, the Gospel and Orphan Care. One of our primary objectives for this year’s conference is to create a forum to consider the good news of the Gospel, explore its implications for how we think about and implement orphan care strategies, and discuss how we can move toward greater collaboration as the people of God for the sake of orphans worldwide.

General session speakers include: Darrin Patrick, Tullian Tchividjian, Tim Chester (coming to us from England), Bryan Loritts, Juan Sanchez, and Jeff Vanderstelt.

Early Bird Registration: $109 Per Person (good through August 31st)

Regular Registration: $149 Per Person (price from September 1 until October 21)
*Registration price includes two onsite lunches and afternoon snacks.

Note: Childcare is available. Infant through 6th grade is $25 per child for the entire conference.

Worship Leaders: Shaun Groves, Aaron Ivey, and Jimmy McNeal

For more information visit http://www.togetherforadoption.org/

Six Things to Know About the Expanded Adoption Tax Credit

IRS Summertime Tax Tip 2011-10, July 27, 2011


If you are adopting a child in 2011, the Internal Revenue Service encourages you to familiarize yourself with the adoption tax credit. The Affordable Care Act increased the amount of the credit and made it refundable, which means it can increase the amount of your refund.

Here are six things to know about this valuable tax credit:

The adoption tax credit, which is as much as $13,170, offsets qualified adoption expenses making adoption possible for some families who could not otherwise afford it. Taxpayers who adopt a child in 2010 or 2011 may qualify if you adopted or attempted to adopt a child and paid qualified expenses relating to the adoption.

Taxpayers with modified adjusted gross income of more than $182,520 in 2010 may not qualify for the full amount and it phases out completely at $222,520. The IRS may make inflation adjustments for 2011 to this phase-out amount as well as to the maximum credit amount.

You may be able to claim the credit even if the adoption does not become final. If you adopt a special needs child, you may qualify for the full amount of the adoption credit even if you paid few or no adoption-related expenses.

Qualified adoption expenses are reasonable and necessary expenses directly related to the legal adoption of the child who is under 18 years old, or physically or mentally incapable of caring for himself or herself. These expenses may include adoption fees, court costs, attorney fees and travel expenses.

To claim the credit, you must file a paper tax return and Form 8839, Qualified Adoption Expenses, and you must attach documents supporting the adoption. Documents may include a final adoption decree, placement agreement from an authorized agency, court documents and the state’s determination for special needs children. You can still use IRS Free File to prepare your return, but it must be printed and mailed to the IRS, along with all required documentation. Failure to include required documents will delay your refund.

The IRS is committed to processing adoption credit claims quickly, but it also must safeguard against improper claims by ensuring the standards for this important credit are met. If your return is selected for review, please keep in mind that it is necessary for the IRS to ensure the legal criteria are met before the credit can be paid. If you are owed a refund beyond the adoption credit, you will still receive that part of your refund while the review is being conducted.

For more information see the Adoption Benefits FAQ page available at http://www.irs.gov/  or the instructions to IRS Form 8839, Qualified Adoption Expenses, which can be downloaded from the website or ordered by calling 800-TAX-FORM (800-829-3676).  http://www.irs.gov/newsroom/article/0,,id=242932,00.html

August Pot-Luck Gathering

I hope you are enjoying the final dog days of summer.  Although these hot, humid days remind us that summer is still in control, soon school & fall activities will be upon us, and these hot, sticky days will only be a memory.  Enjoy while you can!

 

 

 

I encourage everyone to attend our August Pot-Luck gathering so we can re-connect and hear a fabulous speaker talk with us about interacting with the biological families we interact with through adoption, foster care and Safe Families.  Grasping a biblical picture of race and poverty can often lead us to an understanding of some of the families we encounter as we foster or adopt their children. 

 

Our guest speaker will be Joel Hamernick.  Joel has been on staff with Sunshine Gospel Ministries since 1999 and is currently the Executive Director.  

Joel and his wife, Paula, have 7 children of their own (and always a few “extras” around the family!). They live in the Woodlawn community on Chicago’s southside, and are members at Christ Bible Church.

Sunday, August 21, 2011

5:00 p.m. - 7:00 p.m.

Willow Creek Community Church
67 E. Algonquin Road, So. Barrington, IL

Room F150A (west wing/lower level/Promiseland room)

 

Guest Speaker: Joel Hamernick from Sunshine Gospel Ministries will talk about interacting with biological parents.

 

Please bring a dish to share.  Dinner starts promptly at 5:00.   Beverages will be provided. 

 

Childcare is available if you r.s.v.p. with the number of children and their ages. vcministry127@gmail.com

 

 

 

He finds his calling to serve at Sunshine includes being a “bridge builder” within the body of Christ.  Years studying and remaining in dialogue about many divisions within Evangelicalism over racial, theological and class lines have increased his passion to be an ambassador for reconciliation.