Craft Fair Adoption Booth

Just before Halloween, we worked with our case worker, Claire, and another couple who is hoping to adopt to put on a booth at a high school craft fair. It went fairly well. It's amazing to me the variety of ideas about adoption that exist. We would try to start conversations with people by saying something like, "Can we tell you about our adoption booth?" And the reactions were so awesome! We got some people who would say, "Oh no! I'm too old!" Or "No way! I have enough!" Or "Are you promoting adoption of animals?" Hehe! It was a learning experience for them and us as we have only one thing on our minds when we talk about adoption, but the world has many ideas associated with adoption.

Overall, I felt like it was a success because it seemed that not very many people even knew that there were couples waiting to adopt babies. We explained to several of them that the process has changed. It used to be that couples went to orphanages and "picked out" a child to adopt. Now, it's the birth mother or father that chooses the couple to place their child with. It was such a new concept to so many people and most of them were very positive about the whole idea.

We also had them put a sticker on our poster board if they had specific connections with adoption. What amazed me was that there were only a couple people who couldn't think of any one they knew who had experience with adoption. Almost everyone could name someone who was adopted or had adopted or had placed a child or wanted to adopt.

Just an awesome day!