Thursday, November 18, 2010

A Vision for Poland

What an incredible and motivated group of people!  These were our thoughts as we worked with the Adoption Centre key workers in Wroclaw, Poland this past week.  On Monday and Tuesday during the day, we met with a group of government workers, non-government agencies and adoptive parents as we fashioned a vision for a new training program in the country.  Currently, once a family adopts, they have no post adoption training or support and the Adoption Centre wants to change all that.
This is the work team looking to bring post finalization adoption training to families in Poland.
While the plans are still in the early stages, we hope to hear soon that they have received a grant which would fund the development of this post adoption training program. This program will be modeled after the program written by the Institute of Human Services and the Ohio Child Welfare training program and be the first of its kind in Poland..  How fun is this!

During the evening, we had the privlege of once again speaking with adoptive families. Last spring, during our first visit there, we met so many committed families. It was good to renew acquaintances with them and to meet many more.
 David shares with adoptive families on Monday evening.
 These participants are both adoptive parents and adoption workers.

While there, Andrei, an adoptive father and our host while in Poland shared a video from a  national TV news broadcast that was filmed last spring during our visit.  We wanted to add this to our "scrapbook" of memories, so I have posted it below.
We thoroughly enjoyed our time with Andrzej, Kasha and their daughter, Maya.  This young couple is a real force in pursing support and education for adoption parents.


The Spring Video


We returned on Wednesday evening to Kiev, Ukraine to spend our last two days here working with the incredible staff of the International Leadership and Development Center. We look forward to returning home over the weekend to family and friends.  This has been a God-given incredible adventure and we hope, somewhere along the way, we have helped someone.

Thank you for checking in with us on our blog.....the journey continues