In the wake of all of the despair in Haiti, I found out today about an initiative that could bring a lot of hope to an otherwise extradordinarily bleak situation.

At any given time, there’s a lot of adoptions pending between American families and adoption agencies in third world countries. Right now about 1000 kids in Haiti are in limbo as they were going down the long process of being adopted (takes 3+ years sometimes) but now all the paperwork and such is probably buried in the rubble of some demolished building.

So apparently, America has been known to inact something called Huminatarian Parole in situations like this, where basically US diplomats make the case to the government to have the soon-to-be adopted kids placed with their new families immediately, regardless of the adoption process status. While it doesn’t circumvent the adoption process, it instead allows it to continue while the kids are with their new families in the States (and thus out of danger).

That really struck me. Apparently people are becoming activists for this to happen (as it’s only happened twice before in Rwanda and Romania) by writing letters to officials, etc. I just sent mine in. Crazy that 1000 kids could be essentially rescued just by writing email and making phone calls.

My pastor’s brother’s family are personally affected by this, as they are currently going through the process of adopting a child from Haiti. In fact, his sister-in-law was on the ground visiting her (hopeful) soon-to-be son when the disaster struck.

If you want to read her story or send an email or make a phone call to help get this initiative in motion, definitely check out her blog post on the subject.