Lulu's blog

Cherry Pie Picache unlearns acting in Foster Child

Internationally acclaimed actress.

That’s what Cherry Pie Picache is trying to get used to after winning the Best Actress award at the 9th Osian’s Cinefan International Film Festival for Foster Child, which is opening in cinemas nationwide today.

In the movie, she plays a foster mother named Thelma. As a volunteer for a non-government organization taking care of abandoned children, she takes care of very young orphans before they are legally adopted.

Award-winning scriptwriter Ralston Jover (Kubrador) pointed out that Thelma was based on a real-life foster mother whose every day routine he thoroughly followed when he conceptualized the story. Even during the writing of the shooting script, he kept on coming back to the real-life Thelma.

Remember this one?

TACTICS of the POWERS that rule the ADOPTION INDUSTRY

Wed, 2008-02-06 12:26 — Hilary

It is not easy to force a country giving up its children for adoption. It needs perseverance, bribes (sorry: aid projects), some legal advice to change the laws. And it needs to maintain that country's image of not being able to look after their children, of not being a place where people grow up save.

Did Hilary dare call aid projects bribes?

Perhaps she was slightly wrong. Bribes is not always the right word. Project aid is simply the price to be paid for children.  This is what the US report on Vietnamese adoptions says:

According to DIA, orphanages are required to refer one child for foreign adoption for every x dollars donated by the ASP. Thus, if the ASP funds a $10,000 project and the per-child donation is set at $1000 per child, then the orphanage would be required to refer 10 children for intercountry adoption to the ASP. Should the orphanage not have 10 children who are qualified for intercountry adoption, then, according to DIA, the orphanage director is required to find the additional children to complete his side of the agreement.

The Dutch TV programme Netwerk brought last night shocking images of how children are taken away from their Chinese families, to be sold for adoption abroad.

Another phenomenon is that the directors of children's homes pay Big Money for 'foundlings'. It's business to 'find' children.

William Duncan, Deputy-Sectretary General of the Hague Conference, condemns this practice.  No money is ever allowed to beinvolved in international adoptions: NOT A DOLLAR, says Duncan. And he calls it plain trafficking

But why look only at the Chinese side of the coin?

Gita Ramaswamy, India - 2003

(with permission from the author) 

Myth No1: That thousands of children are abandoned by their natural parents. These are the children who need loving homes, hence adoption.

Fact : Most children who come in for adoption are `relinquished' – they are not abandoned. Adoption agencies go in search of vulnerable poor parents and unwed mothers who can be induced into giving up their children. This number is also not sufficient to provide babies for the numbers of waiting parents. Andhra Pradesh, for example, banned relinquishment of babies to private agencies. Between April 2001- July 2003, a total of 285 babies were abandoned all over the state, that is about 10 babies a month. This in a state which had previously sent over 300 children (more than twice the number of abandoned  babies in two years) yearly in inter-country adoption. Maharashtra similarly sends over 500 babies in inter-country adoption (ICA) of which over 60% are relinquished babies.

Myth No. 2 : Foreigners want to save our children

FAMILY IN INDIA

FAMILY IN UNITED KINGDOM

What do they have in common: