How can you help?

Adoption is a loving solution to the problem of caring for orphans around the world. While waiting to be adopted, children are often kept in institutions with the most basic level of care. You can help ease the transition of the children to their new families by supporting the Bac Lieu Orphan Relief Effort.

Beginning late this summer, volunteers are mobilizing to travel to the orphanage where thirty Vietnamese orphans are living. Most of the children are officially matched with US families, but their paperwork is caught in a bureaucratic delay. Most of the children have been living in the Bac Lieu Child Care Centre since they were newborns and are now quickly approaching their second birthdays. This is a critical time period in a child's development.

During this extended waiting time, pairs of volunteers, including unemployed college graduates, hopeful adoptive parents and hopeful adoptive grandparents will take turns traveling to the orphanage. We volunteers will be purchasing food to supplement the rice porridge the children eat now. We will also bring simple learning toys to use in interracting with all the children and building their fine motor skills. Currently, the children are not permitted to have toys out on the floor, so this will be an important and exciting experience for them.

Do you have a heart for children and a resilient sense of adventure? We are seeking additional volunteers to go to Vietnam for a three to six week stay. Accomodations will be at a basic hotel in the nearby city of Ca Mau. The daily schedule will include traveling to the market to purchase food, then taking a taxi for the 30-minute drive to the orphanage outside the city. We expect to spend almost every day at the orphanage, rotating among the three rooms of children, each housing approximately 10 toddlers.

Or, do have a heart to support this effort financially?

Once volunteers arrive, the cost of purchasing additional food for the children, meals, lodging and transportation is expected to run $75 to 100 per day for each pair of volunteers.

Click on the DONATE button to the left to donate tax deductible funds securely. Click on the EMAIL link at the left to contact Angela if you are interested in volunteering.