Happy World Adoption Day everyone!

As you know, adoption is something very near and dear to my heart.  It is through adoption that Jeron and I were able to have children.  And they are the best two boys ever!  Not a day goes by that I don’t think about adoption and the blessing and miracle it has been in my life.

So today we celebrate with everyone else in the world who has been touched by adoption.  We adopted our first son in August 2014 and have celebrated World Adoption Day every year since then.  So, I have always assumed that it was a well-known, well established, celebration that had been around forever.  Boy was I wrong!

As World Adoption day was approaching this year, I began wondering how it all came about.  Who started it? Why did they use a hand with a smiley face as their symbol?  And today I want to share with you what I learned about the brief history of World Adoption Day.

It all begin with a man named Hank Fortener.  He was one of three biological children.  But his parents felt driven to help as many children as they could, so they fostered 36 children over the next seven years.  They wanted to offer a home and a family for all the children that came into their lives.

Even though the family was constantly changing, Hank says that they had a great family unit, and anyone they were taking care of was considered an important part of their family.

 

Picture is Fortener’s Facebook Profile

 

At one point, he had a little brother who stayed with them for 3 years.  But one day they got a phone call and within 24 hours he was taken away.  That is just the way it works with foster care, there was no permanence.

It was because of this that after 7 years of fostering they decided to pursue adoption.  Over the next 10 years, they adoption 8 kids from 7 different countries.  The Fortener’s are rock stars!  I know very little about them, but admire them tremendously.

Because of the role that adoption played in his life and family, Fortener sought to help others with their adoption journeys.  One day he learned that the number one reason people don’t adopt is because of the cost, which can be $40,000 – $50,000.  So, in 2012, he created Adopt Together which is a platform to help families fund their adoptions.

It was so successful that only one year later, in 2013, they began planning a party to celebrate raising their 5 millionth dollar.  When asked what day he would like to have the party, he said, “Let’s do it sometime around World Adoption Day.”  So, his people began searching the internet to find out when it was.  They all had wrongly assumed that World Adoption Day already existed.

He was very surprised to find out that was not the case!  How could there be an International Year of Quinoa (2013), but not a World Adoption Day!  He immediately knew what he had to do next.  That same night they built the website for World Adoption Day.

Later in the process, Fortener actually called the UN to submit a day for international observance.  He didn’t have too much luck because he wasn’t an official ambassador or delegate of any kind.  But he didn’t give up.  When the man from the UN told him that he had to go through all the proper channels, Fortener simply told him they would have to figure it out later.  He already chose the date, November 9, and he had a celebration to plan!

Hank knew that he would need to come up with a visual symbol that would represent World Adoption Day.  Something that when people saw it, they knew what it stood for.

 

 

He thought about adoption, and how the beginnings of all adoptions are almost exclusively tragic.  He said, “You don’t come to adoption because everything is going smoothly.”  A birth mom is either not well or not capable or able to provide for her child.  So, a child is separated for his mother.  That’s where adoption starts, which is tragic.  What adoption does is try to repair the tragedy.  He said, “It brings healing and hope and a celebration.”

He remembered learning a bit of art history about Harvey Ball, the man who created the smiley face.  And even though adoption begins as a tragedy, in the end it makes him smile because it brought him his siblings.  These thoughts inspired him to choose a smiley face drawn on a hand to represent World Adoption Day.

One of his goals was for people to realize that even if everything sucked around you, there was at least one day you could say, “Hey, family is everything, every child deserves a family.”  He set out to boost morale around this conversation of adoption that has, otherwise, been taboo or awkward or uneasy.

Fortener has said, “Anyone and everyone can participate and vote for families and vote for kids to have a home.”

He began his movement.  And people began posting selfies with smiley faces drawn and their hands.   They got Shaq to post, and from there it’s just grown and grown!  Everyday people began sharing how adoption has touched their lives.

So today, let’s celebrate those stories!  Even though most have tragic beginnings, let’s celebrate!  It is because of those tragedies that I have my two sons.  And you have your brother, sister, parents, cousins, grandkids, aunts, or uncles.

 

 

So, what is World Adoption Day all about?  I’ll just share what it says on their website, www.worldadoptionday.org.

World Adoption Day is a day to celebrate family.  A day to raise awareness for adoption.  It is a day to raise funds to support families in their adoption.  Ambassadors from all over the world are organizing events and parties, bringing together people from all walks of life to celebrate.

It really is a worldwide celebration of adoption. If adoption has blessed your life please celebrate with us! Post your pictures and share your stories!

Adoption isn’t something we need to whisper about, after all.

Have a beautiful, wonderful World Adoption Day!

Thank you my lovely friends!

Check out the website for more information and a video where I got most of my information for this post