LWB Community

An Extremely Generous Adoption Grant for Ben

Many of our readers will be familiar with Ben, a sweet and wonderful boy who has been featured on our blog a number of times, including the blog, “Waiting a Decade for a Family to Call His Own”.

Ben is thirteen which makes him very close to ageing out and no longer being eligible for adoption. There is one final push in place to see if a family can be found for this boy who is beloved by all who meet him. His orphanage has agreed to waive the entire donation, and an extremely generous adoption grant has been added to the $2,000 LWB grant already in place. Read more.

John Waits

John is a child whom many of us have watched grow up.  Part of our foster care program in Anhui since 2008, we have seen monthly reports on him for many years, and LWB volunteers have met with him on numerous occasions when they visited his village.  He has truly grown into a boy who is full of fun!  John has been on the shared list for several years now, and he also is the recipient of an adoption assistance grant.  Boys are typically chosen for adoption less frequently than girls (see Amy Eldridge’s blog post, “The Adoption of Boys“).  Despite this, and despite the fact that with each passing year John’s chances of being adopted become slimmer, we hold onto hope that an incredible family is out there for this special boy.

Read more.

An Adoption Grant for Ben!

Some generous donors have stepped forward to provide a $2,000 adoption assistance grant for Ben, the 13-year-old boy recently featured on our blog (“Ben: Waiting a Decade for a Family to Call His Own“). Ben is close to aging out, and these donors want to help him find his family before it is too late. Ben’s orphanage has also agreed to waive half of the orphanage donation fee, making it just $2,500!

In addition to this good news, we also have some short videos of Ben to share. Read more.

A Victory for Victor!

Due to the compassion expressed for Victor after our blog post about him several weeks ago (“V is for Victor”), we have established a grant for his adoption. Currently, Victor’s adoption grant is $1,000, but donations will be accepted on his behalf to make this grant grow.

Read more.

Zane: Call Him, Maybe?

Our hearts melted when we saw these new photos of Zane, a regular rock star here on LWB Community! We can’t imagine how a boy with as much personality as Zane is still waiting on the shared list to be chosen by a family for adoption. However, we can imagine him singing something like this to his imaginary family as he waits and waits to be chosen:

I threw a wish in the well
Don’t ask me, I’ll never tell…
Hey — I just met you,
And this is crazy,
So here’s my picture (and my adoption file)
So call me…maybe? Read more.

Zane’s Adoption Grant Just Doubled in Size!

When Zane was found as an infant, he had blue lips and breathing problems. A doctor told the nanny at his orphanage that he most likely would not live past five years old. Under the watchful and loving care of his nannies, Zane lived to five years old and beyond, but doctors still told them that his heart defect was too complicated for surgery. Yet still, Zane fought to survive. He was nine years old when he was noticed by our medical team, and LWB Spain raised the funds to provide him with surgery that healed his heart. Read more.

Lishui Families Give Back

About a year after adopting an older girl from the Lishui orphanage in 2008, Suzanne Damstedt began as LWB’s Orphanage Assistance Director. One of her first projects was helping this orphanage, which had not previously been helped by LWB. She shared the project with a small Yahoo group of Lishui adoptive families, and, with generous support from the group, 100 sets of baby clothes, over 100 bags of cloth diapers, and physical therapy supplies were provided to the orphanage.

In addition to the items provided, Zane (wearing blue in the front row in the photo above) was seen by our medical program director and later received heart surgery. We are still hoping he will have a chance at adoption. In fact, he is one of four children for whom LWB provides adoption assistance grants! Read more.

Zane’s Good Fortune

With the beginning of a new year brings hopes for good fortune and a prosperous year ahead.  One of  the stars of our blog, Zane, is starting out the Year of the Dragon with some very good fortune.  Starting today, Love Without Boundaries is able to offer a $2,000 grant towards his adoption!  These funds will be provided to the agency through which he is matched with a family, to go towards the family’s adoption expenses.

Zane has turned eleven years old just this week and continues to do well since we last wrote about him. Read more.

Timothy, Ready and Waiting!

This sweet smile belongs to Timothy, a young man who was in LWB’s Nutrition program in Deyang, Sichuan Province, in 2007.  Timothy received club foot casting through An Orphan’s Wish in Guilin, using the Ponseti method to gently move his feet into proper position. He arrived in August 2009 and was discharged nearly a year later in July 2010. Timothy also has a diagnosis of arthrogryposis. Currently he is six years old and wears an insole in his shoes. He no longer wears braces except for when he sleeps at night.
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Grants…Grants…Grants!

Love Without Boundaries has been fortunate to be able to offer grants to a number of children who are in need of a little extra help in being chosen by a family. Each adoption grant is attached to a specific child and not to a particular agency or specific parents. Generally, once the adoptive family receives travel approval, the grant money is paid directly to the adoption agency to assist with the adoption expenses. We are very excited to announce that this month has brought us two new $2,000 grant recipients: Rocky and David!

Rocky

Rocky earned his nickname by being shy and pretending he was asleep when volunteers visited the Believe in Me Changde School in Hunan he was attending. When he thought no one was looking, Rocky would open his eyes and take a peek at the visitors, and he eventually overcame his fear. His bravery earned the respect of the LWB volunteers, who gave him the nickname “Rocky.” Nine-year-old Rocky was also a grant recipient in 2008; however, a family never was matched with him, and eventually the grant funds went to help bring another child home.
Read more.