Regarding America

The Americans Will Adopt Anyone

2010-01-18T10:39:59-08:00

By Daniel Hamon

"Doesn't anyone ever want to adopt an older child?" she asked one day as a Spanish agency rep loaded twin baby boys into his back seat. For these scenes were becoming unbearable, the older children feeling more unwanted with every glorious departure of a baby.
At the beginning, the older children had run to comb their hair and change their shirts when visitors came, hoping that a last-minute excellent impression would make a difference.
"No," said the agency rep. "People want babies. Sometimes toddlers, but mostly babies and, most of all, baby girls."

These are the words of Melissa Fay Greene as she tells the story of Haregewoin Teferra, a woman who worked tirelessly to save the children of Ethiopia.

In the adoption world, Haregewoin learned, even a three-year-old was an "older child," declined by most prospective parents as possibly too damaged or traumatized by early experiences.
"But won't someone adopt the older children?" Haregewoin sighed as a Canadian-agency person prepared to depart with a baby.
"Try the Americans."
"What? Really?"
"The Americans will adopt anyone."
"What does it mean?"
"There was a boy at the Mother Theresa Home who lost both his legs..."
"What?"
"I think he was herding his goats over train tracks and the train came and caught the boy. But the Americans are adopting him. They'll adopt school kids. They'll adopt kids with CP...
"Boys?"
"Yes, boys! They adopt boys, they adopt siblings."
"But big boys? School-age boys?"
"Yes, I'm telling you!"
Haregewoin was off like a shot. She sprinted to her house to start making phone calls to find the Americans.

Photo - ThereIsNoMeWithoutYou.com

Army Helicopter Pilot Becomes Angel to Iraqi Family

2009-12-30T23:01:27-08:00

By Daniel Hamon

Russell Hayes had served in the U.S. Army as a helicopter pilot during Vietnam. In 2007, he was recalled by the Army for service in Iraq. Hayes, age 55, thought there was no way he would be going back to the military. But his wife Carmen told him that perhaps God had a reason for him to be sent to Iraq, so Hayes went and ended up becoming an angel to the Salman family.

Abdul Salman, a wounded veteran of the Iran-Iraq war and father of six children, was a laborer in the "Green Zone" in Baghdad. His three youngest children, Seja, Ali and Bara'a were born with degenerative dwarfism. Hayes' youngest daughter is also a dwarf. From the moment Hayes landed in Iraq in 2008 and found out about Abdul Salman, he decided to do everything he could to help the Salman family.

Hayes worked hard to get visas for the children to come to the U.S. for treatment but the process took longer than a year. So Hayes stayed in Iraq longer than he was required to in order to help see this through. Through his dedication, personal financial support and the help he received from many U.S. military personnel and civilians, the children are receiving medical care and the Salman family is now in Idaho starting a new and better life.

Click here to find out more about this story and the Dwarf Advocacy Association.

Rooms for the Homeless

2009-12-26T09:38:00-08:00

By Daniel Hamon

According to the Columbus Dispatch, fifteen homeless people in Colorado Springs will be inside for Christmas, thanks to a mysterious donor who paid for their motel rooms. The donor, a woman that said her name was Linda Craft, paid in advance for four rooms insisting that they be used to provide shelter to some of the homeless campers that have been gathering near Interstate 25.

As reported by The Gazette, Maggie Spence, one of the beneficiaries "welcomed the weeklong shelter as an aid in finally kicking the pneumonia she’s been battling for weeks."

Linda Craft is another example of people in America quietly taking the initiative to help their neighbors in need.

America's Gift to Asia

2009-12-25T16:20:45-08:00

By Daniel Hamon

The Khaleej Times, one of the leading English language newspapers in the United Arab Emirates, recently published an article written by Kishore Mahbubani, dean of the School of Public Policy at the National University of Singapore, in which he attributes the rise of Asia to America's generosity:

The biggest strategic gift that America has made to the world is to spark the rise of Asia by generously sharing its wisdom and best practices with millions of Asians. It is dangerous to over-simplify history, but some crude facts are undeniable. If the American dream had not been discovered and created, and Europe had continued to dominate world history, Asian societies may not have awoken from centuries of slumber so quickly and smoothly. American generosity saved Asia.

Even now, each year about 90,000 young Indians and 80,000 young Chinese study in American universities. Is it any wonder that China and India are re-emerging as the world’s largest economies? And is it any wonder that the best practices they are using for their dynamic new corporations are taken from lessons provided by American universities? This is one reason why when businessmen from both sides of the Pacific meet they speak a common language: American.

One gift the world can celebrate on this Christmas day.

Photo - Atlas Shrugs

Comforting Trees

2009-12-24T14:19:21-08:00

By Daniel Hamon

For those who have lost their jobs, hope or faith, Sharon Girulat offers comfort in the form of a Christmas tree:

Two years ago she phoned the owner of a Frosty Farms lot and asked if she could have some leftover trees. They gave her about 50. She and her husband Rollin delivered them, along with decoration kits they made up, to some churches. Last year she called Frosty Farms again, as well as Johnson Brothers tree farm. She got another 50 trees and recruited a few colleagues to help make the deliveries.
This Christmas, 50 turned into 500. Peltzer Pines, which has several farms in Orange County, offered up 350 trees when Sharon came knocking. She put an ad on Craigslist, asking people to sing out if they had lost their job or their hope or their faith, and would find comfort in a Christmas tree.

There were a lot of touching responses including the following:

Sharon was surprised by the number of men who wrote to her saying they lost their job this year and for the first time can't afford Christmas. Many of them volunteered to help deliver trees to others in exchange for the one they were taking.

Photo - Leonard Ortiz

Making the Crooked Straight

2009-12-21T01:33:14-08:00

By Daniel Hamon

An upcoming documentary will focus on the work of Rick Hodes:

Born in Long Island, New York and educated at John Hopkins - Dr. Rick Hodes has dedicated his life to helping heal the sick and poor of Ethiopia over the past 20 years. Many of his patients are stricken with tuberculosis of the spine, a disease that creates massive humps on the backs of its victims. Eventually they’re forced into permanent forward-bending posture, which in turn prevents their lungs from working properly, and if left untreated leads to death.

Driven by his devotion to Orthodox Judaism and its belief that “He who saves one life, saves an entire world," Hodes provides these patients with hospital care - arranges for complex overseas surgeries - often paying for these out of his own pocket - and has, thus far, fostered seventeen children in order to provide them with not only proper medical care but a home and an education...Hodes believes the only way to change the world is to be the change.

I first learned about Dr. Rick Hodes from Melissa Fay Greene's There Is No Me Without You: One Woman's Odyssey to Rescue Her Country's Children:

[Rick Hodes is] a person who had disdained every opportunity to build a prosperous life far from a world of suffering and death. Healthy, lured by no particular financial or career incentives, he waded into the disaster areas of the world (Rwanda, Somalia, Albania, Sudan, Zaire, Tanzania, Lesotho, and Ethiopia), somehow feeling, "This is my fight."

He was a white American doctor. He was widely known, easily spotted. It was said that he would treat anyone who came to him, regardless of ability to pay, regardless of the hour of day or night.

He treated hundreds of patients pro bono as well, in paupers' hospitals and shantytowns across Addis Ababa. Between forty and fifty Ethiopian children and adults had been sent by Hodes to the United States or Israel for medical treatment unavailable in Ethiopia.

Photo - The Jewish Daily Forward

Taking our Chances in America

2009-11-27T16:25:53-08:00

By Daniel Hamon

In a recent article, Scott Simon expressed his gratitude for the adoption of his daughters from China. He is forever indebted to China for his daughters, but is keenly aware of the fear Chinese mothers face due to government policies that lead to the abandonment and/or otherwise bleak fate of many baby girls in that country.

Had Simon's daughters grown up in China they may have faced discrimination if they belonged to any of China's ethnic minorities. Likewise, Ethiopian and Kenyan minority ethnic children face discrimination growing up in their countries.

Adopting one of our own sons from Ethiopia, my wife and I questioned whether our son would face racism here. However, we concluded as Simon does that:

...in cities, towns and families across (our) country, people have grown to see ethnicity as merely one feature of our human makeup...When it comes to living with the risk of bigotry, I feel blessed to be able to take my chances—and more importantly, my children's chances—in America.

America and Americans are not perfect: "But someone of Luo descent has been elected president of the U.S. when ethnic strife seems to make a Luo president unfathomable in Kenya."

Thank you, America for giving our children the opportunity for a safer and better life!

Americans' Charitable Giving: $300 billion in 2008

2009-08-23T21:12:12-07:00

By Daniel Hamon

In the midst of a recession, Americans donated an estimated $307 billion for charitable causes in 2008, marking the second year in a row in which Americans have given more than $300 billion. A report from the Giving USA Foundation tracks giving by types of donors and recipients and shows that charitable giving by individuals continues to be the largest component of all donations, reaching $229 billion or 75% of the total. Religious and educational institutions received $146 billion or 48% of the total.

This is the breakdown of charitable donations:

Individuals gave $229 billion -- 75% of total giving
Charitable bequests were $22 billion -- 7% of total giving
Corporate giving was $14 billion -- 5% of total giving
Foundation grants were $41 billion -- 13% of total giving

After religious and education institutions, foundations received $32 billion, health organizations $21 billion, public-society benefit organizations $23 billion and Arts/Culture/Humanities organizations got $12 billion. Organizations involved in international assistance, including disaster relief and direct aid, received $13 billion in contributions.

Photo - Giving USA Foundation

USNS Comfort

2009-08-09T22:24:38-07:00

By Daniel Hamon

A U.S. hospital ship completed a four-month mission to provide humanitarian care to areas of seven Latin American countries where medical care is limited or not easily available. The USNS Comfort arrived in Haiti on April 9 and left Nicaragua on July 14 to return to the United States. Some of the results include: 100,049 treated patients, 1,657 surgeries, 135,000 filled prescriptions and 15,003 dental patients.

USNS Comfort is part of Continuing Promise 2009, an effort planned and managed by the U.S. Naval Forces Southern Command and U.S. 4th Fleet. Participants include U.S and international military medical personnel, regional health ministries and NGOs. This year, USNS Comfort visited Haiti, Dominican Republic, Antigua, Panama, Colombia, El Salvador and Nicaragua.

In addition to medical and dental care, USNS Comfort provided veterinary care, delivered donated food and medicines worth over $4 million, and its Navy Seabees completed 13 construction projects.

Continuing Promise 2009 was the 4th humanitarian mission to this region. The prior three missions combined treated 169,000 patients and performed over 1,500 surgeries.

Fred Baker, filing a report aboard the USNS Comfort, makes the following comments:

But the impact of the $25 million mission cannot effectively be measured in terms of gross numbers, but more so in the individual lives it changes, said Peggy Goebel, a volunteer nurse working aboard with Project Hope, one of the first groups to team up with the Navy for these types of missions.

“The difference can’t be measured in bottles of Tylenol passed out … that’s not it,” she said.

Goebel recalled a teenager she saw in a remote village in Nicaragua. She was 16, poor and hungry. Her baby was swaddled in rags, and at 2 months old, weighed less than a newborn. The young mother was trying to breastfeed, but hadn’t eaten enough to produce milk. The baby was starving, listless and covered in scabies, Goebel said.

A Navy physician at the site took money from his pocket, gave it to an interpreter to buy formula and diapers, and asked the mother to return the next day. When she did, both mother and baby were bathed and clothed. The doctor and Goebel taught her how to mix the formula. They cleaned her only bottle and fed the baby.

More importantly, Goebel made contact with a local Project Hope coordinator, who will follow up with the mother and child to ensure care. The formula the doctor bought was enough to last only a few days, but the follow-up care could mean the difference between life and death for the baby.

Photo - United States Southern Command

Art for Orphans: Isabelle's Global Orphan Project

2009-07-12T22:12:35-07:00

By Daniel Hamon

Isabelle Redford became so concerned about the plight of orphaned children in Haiti that she decided to find a way to help. Since she has always loved to draw, she started drawing and selling gift cards to raise money to help care for orphans. Through her efforts, Isabelle raised $10,000 that funded an orphanage in Haiti and will soon fund another one in Malawi. Isabelle is only 7-years old but says she wants to keep doing this for a "very long time, maybe forever."

Here is video of Isabelle's story on Friday's edition of ABC World News Tonight.

There are 140 million orphaned and abandoned children in the world. Please visit The Global Orphan Project or Isabelle's blog to learn more about how to help these children.

Photo - The Global Orphan Project