National Adoption Awareness Month 2019 with CCI

(Inter)National Adoption Awareness Month 2019

In the United States, National Adoption Awareness Month has been promoted for over two decades. Originating with an Adoption Week announced in 1976 by Massachusetts Governor Michael Dukakis to raise awareness of the need for adoptive families for children in foster care, the first National Adoption Week was announced by President Ronald Reagan in 1984. In 1995, a little more than a decade later, President Bill Clinton expanded the awareness week to the entire month of November. 

In the recent years of the internet, National Adoption Awareness Month has unofficially become a time for sharing a myriad of stories about adoption in general, including domestic adoption and foster care, but also expanding to encompass international and transracial adoption. 

A large majority of the stories traditionally shared have been from adoption agencies and adoptive parents. Many of these stories tended to focus on positive stories of adoption, in order to encourage a greater amount of families to adopt those still in foster care. 

But recently a number of adult adoptees have been hoping that the month could also call attention to the lived experiences of adoption once the child has grown up. They noticed that within the vast majority of stories shared for National Adoption Month, one voice in particular seemed to be missing: that of the adoptee him or herself. With groundbreaking campaigns like the November 2014 Twitter hashtag movement #flipthescript headed by Rosita Gonzalez at Lost Daughters, adoptee organizations have been fighting to bring the focus to the adoptee voice and bring adoptees into the forefront of the narrative building process. 

At CCI we want to recognize the historical and national origins of this National Month and also acknowledge that there can be multiple purposes to NAAM. At CCI, not all of our community is located within the United States. We also share such varying views on adoption, some even that might challenge the dominant narratives that often circulate during NAAM. 

Therefore, CCI hopes to help the adoptee community add yet another purpose to NAAM. We hope to expand NAAM into a time for our global CCI Community to:

• Empower each other to share our own perspectives and lived experiences as adoptees

• Give prominence to Adoptee voices and adoptee-centric spaces, events, organizations and more

• Provide space to explore where our Chinese adoptee community fits within the larger international adoption community. 

To these ends, we are excited to announce the following NAAM 2019 activities. Come celebrate, observe, and discuss NAAM with CCI!

Sources: 

Children's Bureau. "History of National Adoption Month." U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. Website. Accessed 4 November 2019. https://www.childwelfare.gov/topics/adoption/nam/about/history/

González, Rosita. “#FliptheScript on #NationalAdoptionMonth.” Lost Daughters. Website. Accessed 9 November 2019. http://www.thelostdaughters.com/2014/11/flipthescript-on-nationaladoptionmonth.html 

Lost Daughters. “Lost Daughters: #flipthescript 2014 the origins.” Lost Daughters. Website. Accessed 7 November 2019. http://www.thelostdaughters.com/p/flipthescript.html

NAAM Features on CCI Facebook Page

This month, we'll be sharing content frequently on our public FB page (@cci.adoptees) and featuring adoptee-centric / adoptee-by articles, organizations, and efforts in an effort to help re-purpose #NAAM2019 into a month that also shines a spotlight on the adult adoptee narrative and spreads awareness about the complexities of international and transracial adoption. 

Be sure to like our page to keep up with the latest at CCI NAAM! (https://www.facebook.com/cci.adoptees/) 

P.S. E-mail (chinachildreninternational@gmail.com) or message us if there is something you think we should share!

CCI November Adoptee-Only Guest Speaker Chat 2019 Featuring Laura Williams

China’s Children International’s November (Inter)national Adoptee Month Guest Speaker Chat 2019 Featuring Laura Williams, transracial Chinese American adoptee, researcher, and mentor within the Chinese adoptee community

 #NAAM2019

Date: Tuesday, November 19th

from 8:00 - 8:30 PM EST 

Live stream to YouTube through Zoom

The annual CCI November Guest Chat is a special edition of our Adoptee Only Guest Speaker series and is held in honor of November (Inter)National Adoptee 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. 

For our extra special CCI November Guest Chat, CCI is honored to welcome Laura X. Williams, Chinese adoptee and researcher. She will be coming to speak to CCI members about her own story, her research, her findings, and her experiences as a Chinese adoptee working in the adoption research field.

ABOUT LAURA

Laura X. Williams, is a transracial Chinese American Adoptee, adopted from Yi Wu, Zhejiang, China who grew up in Verona, New Jersey with her parents and pet cats. As a graduate of Goucher College’s Masters in Cultural Sustainability program, Laura explored topics of adoption identity, social barriers among adoptive parents, cultural context surrounding adoptees in the United States, and holistic group processing techniques. Laura has eight years of research and mentorship experience throughout her local adoptive communities. She now lives and works in Denver, Colorado pursuing licensure as a Marriage and Family Therapist. Combining it with her past research, Laura hopes to merge her two fields of study into an innovative gift for continued exploration of intersectional identity development throughout one’s lifetime.