How We Work: Policy

AGCI is dedicated to changing the reality of the orphan crisis. One of the ways we’re intervening for the 8 million orphans living in institutions is by creating Policy to change broken systems for orphans and create clear paths to family and independence.

AGCI’s Policy work creates real, lasting change for orphans by:

Empowering leaders—Through Child Advocacy Centers, we can train and empower leaders to serve as advocates and create more pathways to family.

Standardizing Care—By investing in one home to serve as a model of care for the other institutions within a country, we can elevate the level of care while also finding solutions for the unique structural, cultural and economic challenges that need to be overcome in order to establish permanency for orphans and families in crisis.

Our Policy Work in Action

timthumb 3.phpChina

In 2013, of the 57 orphanages in the Fujian Province, only 9 were preparing adoption paperwork for the orphans in their care. Without this paperwork, children are ineligible to be adopted by loving families. To address this concern, AGCI hosted the first ever paperwork conference to educate orphanage directors on the importance of completing paperwork for children and advocating for children with special needs. Just two years after our advocacy, 60 children with special needs have since united with their forever families through AGCI alone. To further support these orphanages, we’ve raised the funds to purchase the computers, scanners, printers, and cameras needed to help complete adoption paperwork and advocate for these children.

Bulgaria

For decades, AGCI has supported Bulgaria’s orphans through the creation of Hannah’s Hope homes and an elevated standard of loving, family- like orphan care throughout Bulgaria. This new standard of care and commitment to supporting birth families has informed Bulgaria’s goal of drastically reducing the number of children in institutions as a whole.

Additionally, following a soft closure of international adoption in Bulgaria, AGCI sought out the new Minister of Justice to revolutionize Image uploaded from iOSthe adoption process. Under AGCI’s guidance, Bulgaria implemented a new countrywide Hague adoption process and advocacy tools
for orphans with special needs. Today, more children with special needs are parented by their birth families thanks to these additional support systems.

Colombia

AGCI is working to change the landscape of adoption and orphan advocacy in Colombia by hiring a social worker to advocate for children who are waiting for forever families. By traveling throughout Colombia, she ensures information, photos and paperwork for adoptable children are up-to-date, completed and sent to the Central Authority so that adoption agencies around the world can find more families for waiting children.