Host an Orphan, (and mess with a child's head), Program

That "incorrect" information comes from those with more personal experience than me with this particular organization. 

As a founding member of PPL, I believe it's necessary to include information that relates to details I receive via private email, or written posts like:

I cannot tell you how many families I have met over the years who hosted kids through this program, then they received the big sales pitch to adopt the kids, signed contract, wrote checks only to find out several months down the line that the kids are not even legally available for adoption.  [From:  OO ]

It's been my experience most who have such information about an organization do not want to make name/contact information available to the public because they are afraid they will receive unwanted attacks, much like the one that's been coming from you.

Personally, I'm very glad your experience worked out so well.  Perhaps your adopted son feels the same.  However, yours is not the only experience worth mentioning.  The less-than happy experience deserves to be mentioned, too.  With that, I think it would be rather myopic and narrow-minded to think ANY organization busying itself with ICA is nothing but altruistic, and without a few self-serving interests that may have nothing to do with "a child's best interest". 

If the not-well-liked "critic" helps bring an awareness, like a need for better practice in Adoptionland, then all is not so bad.

At the risk of sounding petty, I would like to use excerpts from a report,"Kidsave: Adoption by 'tryout'",  written in 2001 and featured in USA Today, to clear a misunderstanding.  This piece contradicts the idea that only children from Colombia are sent to America to be "tried-out" as adoption-material:

At age 10, Constantine left his orphanage in Russia with not much more than a pair of sandals, an extra T-shirt and a toothbrush. He was told he was going to summer camp in the USA.

"I thought I was just going for a 'rest-out' from everything in Russia," he says, sitting next to his adoptive mother, Terry Baugh, in their living room in Washington, D.C., nearly a year later.

After a lovely description of the then-adoptable child, the article continues...

Constantine is one of 242 orphans and abandoned children from Russia and Central Asia who have found homes with American families this year through Kidsave. The program, which is supported by private donations, has found homes for 453 children ages 5 to 15 since it was started in 1999 to "eliminate the harmful institutionalization of children," says executive director Randi Thompson. There is a catch, though. Some of the children who come to America are sent back when an adopting family can't be found, and that doesn't sit well with many adoption experts.

See, this is where some problematic issues within the adoption industry are universal, and not limited to the year of said event, or the names of parties involved. I'm betting when an adoption plan can't be made, that doesn't sit well with the kids who have to go back to life in the orphanage, either.

No one who has already been abandoned wants to be rejected, too.  This point needs to be considered very seriously by the very adults wanting to host "the poor (traveling) orphans" used in this program.   The intentions may be good, but there is emotional harm that can be done when a child is sent overseas in the guise of a "vacation", but everyone knows it's a last-ditch effort to find a home and family.  Ah, to be the child who leaves the USA knowing he is not wanted.... by anyone. 

Rejected, again.... only this time, the rejection is bigger.

The article continues about the effects a "failed trip" has on those young kids, forced to "go back":

"You can imagine the incredible devastation," says Joyce Maguire Pavao, director of the Cambridge, Mass.-based Center for Family Connections, a non-profit counseling center for adoption and foster-care families. "These kids already have abandonment issues and then they're sent back."

Eight-year-old Misha left his orphanage last summer and came to America with great expectations. Misha has blue eyes and sandy hair, and he can recite Russian poetry by Pushkin. His caregivers in the orphanage where he lives say he is an artistic child who likes music and dancing. Misha was sent to live with a ranching family in Montana, though, and he floundered. After six weeks, Misha was sent back to the orphanage.

Thompson says Kidsave workers do everything they can to make sure each child finds a home. Their success rate is high. Of the 470 children who have participated in the program, all but 17 have found families.

Here's my favorite part, because it's all part and parcel of the lure of the foreign adoption plan:

 Parents who adopt are asked to make a donation to support deinstitutionalization and adoption programs for the country where their child is from, usually between $500 and $2,000.

Ah yes, the forced orphanage donation.  Gotta love how that works itself in...

So whether we nit-pick about the name of the sending country, or not, there are some basic facts that need to be considered before thanking Kidsave for ALL that they do for adoptable children. 

While their success rate to find "suitable homes" for "hard to place children" may be high, one does have to wonder what happens five weeks, even five years after the adoption agency and the folks at Kidsave go away, leaving the newly-formed family alone.  Far too many of our abuse cases feature APs not properly prepared for the children they receive.  In many situations, the parents state the child was fine, at first, but things began to change, like when the child started school.  Even more disturbing is the questionable re-homing trend that's picking-up in the USA.  However, this stuff doesn't make much news because, well, underground networks try to be a wee bit secret, and most people think all adoptions end-up A-OK.

Because post adoption monitoring is not mandatory in the US, I don't see how any one can say, with any certainty, the summer-trial offer made through Kidsave prepares both PAP and involved children for the realities that take place post-adoption.  In fact, I'd be curious to learn if there have been any or many complications that made life in the adoptive home very difficult... so difficult the adoptee had to be sent away?  I believe this is information both the US government and sending governments need to know, for future statistic keeping.

Last, but not least, if we're talking about a "child's best interest" in all of this, shouldn't we wonder what happens to the returned kids, once they go back to their orphan-life in their assigned orphanage, like unwanted goods?  (Will the memory of a "vacation of a life-time" turn out to be the most disappointing of all expectations?  Or will they eventally get over it, like most orphans do?) 

I still maintain taking older children overseas for an adoption audition is cruel to the kids. It reads too much like The Orphan Trains, another movement that served many potential adopters well, made the adoption industry grow by leaps and bounds, and left more than a few adopted kids on those trips wondering, "What the hell just happened?"

And I still maintain, if Kidsave is going to send kids to try-out new homes, at least keep the trips local and domestic.  Keep foreign trade out of it.