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PLAN'S HISTORY

Babies were dying and children were living in the streets. It was the 1970s, and we were anxious about these half-Vietnamese, half-American children who were being shunned by the U.S. and by war-torn Vietnamese society. I was part of a group of four adoptive families in Oregon who wanted to do whatever we could to help these helpless ones as well as other babies and children who needed families. We had no funds to work with because our personal funds were being spent on our large adoptive families, so we focused on doing the things we could do.

Our group began by inviting couples interested in adopting to attend small gatherings. Our goal was to form a support group of people with a vision for orphans. We also wrote a five-week adoption education course that included topics such as older children adoptions, handicapped children, foreign adoptions, and how to process paperwork. As word of our preadoption classes spread, our home filled with couples who shared our enthusiasm. We trained other couples to teach in their homes, and these groups multiplied until we were able to offer classes in the major cities of Oregon. We also held our first Oregon adoption conference, attracting even more families.

Because our outreach was growing so fast, we decided we needed a more formalized organization. We established a Board of Directors and incorporated as a nonprofit organization. Our first board meetings lasted into the wee hours as we hammered out policy and programs that would provide the best possible service to our adoptive families. We worked hard to meet all of the licensing requirements and were granted a child placement license in March of 1975.

Our successes soon came to the attention of several national adoption organizations, and I was flown to various adoption conferences throughout the U.S. to teach our new methods. Our innovative ideas of parents helping parents, support networks, methods of helping "hard to place children," social worker contracts, and educational classes were incorporated by others, beginning nationwide trends in adoption. We received requests for information from groups wishing to establish similar adoption programs, so we set up mini-workshops where we shared our "pioneer" experiences. As these wonderful people established their own agencies, we found we had a network of colleagues across the nation, which were to become valuable contacts in the future.

One month after PLAN was officially licensed, we held a board meeting where we again discussed the agonizing plight of the Vietnamese children. Vietnam was about to fall to the Communists, but Washington D.C. was silent when it came to these children, many of them fathered by American servicemen. We joined in flooding the White House with telegrams, asking them to airlift these children to the U.S. We joined the strategy of using a pyramid effect with each person calling ten friends who would then call ten friends, and on and on. It worked! Our government sent U.S. military planes to airlift out many of the war orphans—two of whom were to become my own sons by adoption! Our dreams of helping the Vietnamese children had finally come true.

Our outreach to homeless children continued to flourish.  I became Executive Director, and we hired more staff, contracted with Oregon Children's Services Division to find adoptive placements for their "hard to place" children, established contacts in Latin American Countries to find homes for their orphans, enlarged our Asian adoption programs, developed a program to offer adoption options to women with crisis pregnancies, and provided Oregon-based teaching seminars for mental health professionals offering specific training in counseling adopted children.

Early on we joined a coalition with other Oregon adoption agencies and drafted legislative bills. I spent many hours at the State Capital testifying about our proposed legislation. The result of our combined efforts made Oregon a leader in adoption reform, giving much more protection to children as well as providing adoption subsides to families who need extra financial help for their adopted children.

Over the years, I have traveled to Thailand, India, Vietnam, Peru, China, Moscow, Siberia, Brazil, Colombia, Liberia, and Guatemala to liaison with orphanages and government officials. These experiences have been rigorous as well as heartbreaking because I met so many children who pleaded with me to take them home.  Knowing that I couldn't help all of them was painful, but I have had the joy of helping find families for thousands of them. I've also been privileged to adopt 16 children myself.

PLAN has had years of experience in reaching out to new areas of need.We were licensed in China where many infant girls waited in orphanages. We also knew we were called to go into countries where the need was the greatest. In response to this need, PLAN was the first adoption agency to go into war-torn Liberia to help the orphaned children there. PLAN recently received a license to go back to Vietnam, connecting once again with our early history. We have many contacts in Vietnam due to our work there in the past, and are thrilled to be once again helping the many children and infants in need. Also, for many years, PLAN has been facilitating adoptions of children in Latin American countries.

PLAN knows it is vital to continue to provide funds for humanitarian aid in many countries to help the children who have medical and other needs that require extra support. We cannot forget the children who continue to wait for adoption.

In January of 2006, I retired from my mission of love at PLAN and passed on the Executive Directorship to Margaret Nice, an adoptive mother who is blessed with a gift for prayer, love of children, and talent for organization. She is enthusiastically carrying on PLAN’s vision to continue to be a leader in adoption!