International Adoptee Awareness Month Logo designed by CCI Creative Director, Emily Finley.
InterNational AdoptEE Awareness Month 2020
2020 marks CCI’s third year recognizing National Adoption Awareness Month. As such, we are making an important change to include our international members and to reflect our commitment to being an adoptee-centric space.
Instead of National Adoption Awareness Month, at CCI, we hope members will join us in recognizing International Adoptee Awareness Month.
While #NAAM is typically a month dominated by the voices of adoptive parents, agencies, and social workers, we here at CCI seek to reclaim and re-focus this month to acknowledge the global community of Chinese adoptees. We envision #IAAM as a time when adoptee voices and narratives are centered. We want to begin by acknowledging that adoptees of all backgrounds often experience loss, pain, and struggles associated with our relinquishment and subsequent adoption.
As a global community of Chinese adoptees with diverse lived experiences, we want this month to be about our members, your stories, your work, and your resilience. While we are all Chinese adoptees, we all lead very different lives. We are not a monolith but instead unique individuals with our own stories to tell or as our motto goes, “Same Beginnings, Different Paths.” We want to thank all of our members for being part of our community. The leadership team here at CCI feels so honored to be able to cultivate this beautifully diverse community of Chinese adoptees. Once again, happy International Adoptee Awareness Month.
iaam 2020 activities
In recent years, adult adoptees have begun to reclaim NAAM with movements like #flipthescript through re-focusing on the adoptee narrative and centering the voices and lived experiences of adult adoptees. CCI embraces this new vision and throughout November holds a number of connected events and activities to connect our community and empower Chinese adult adoptees to make their voices heard. We support our members in sharing their diverse stories and perspectives in order to reclaim November as adult adoptees, to shatter misconceptions of a single adoptee narrative, and to rebuild an International Adoptee Awareness month that centers our lived experiences as adult adoptees.
IAAM’20 Guest Speaker Chat WITh Lilly Fei
Save the date: November 22nd at 5 PM EST
Streamed live over YouTube here.
The annual CCI November Guest Chat is a special edition of our Adoptee Only Guest Speaker series and is held in honor of November International Adoptee Awareness Month. It hopes to amplify adoptee voices that critically and thoughtfully engage in challenging dominant adoption narratives, as well as to encourage others to think about the social, economic, and political conditions that underlie and perpetuate the international adoption system and that inform adult adoptee communities.
This year, we are honored to welcome Lilly Fei, an adult transracial adoptee who advocates for adoptees (while getting her PhD in cellular and molecular biology).
How to edit the cover photo
FACEBOOK COVER PHOTO
Join CCI in recognizing International Adoptee Awareness Month 2020 by changing your profile photo to our IAAM 2020 Facebook cover photo! Not only does it raise visibility for IAAM and our global adult adoptee Chinese adoptee movement, but it is also a fun way to participate in the community and express this piece of your identity. Our Facebook Cover photo was designed by Emily Finley, CCI’s creative director and a Chinese adoptee herself.
Social Media
Over the month of November, we will be sharing part two of the “Home is…” Project, led by CCI Summer Intern Shelley Rottenberg and designed by CCI Board Member Carrie Doung, on Twitter and Instagram. This part of the project explores adoptees’ sense of place and their personal relationship with the idea of home. Follow our accounts to join in the conversation.
We will also be using our social media platforms to elevate adoptee voices by sharing their posts on our Instagram Stories.
We will also be using our social media platforms to elevate adoptee voices by sharing their posts on our Instagram Stories.