Financing Your Adoption and How Adoption ARK Can Help
Every day working at Adoption ARK we hear these words: “We wish we could adopt, but it is just way too much money”. As soon as future parents hear numbers like $17500 , $20000, or other amounts they become discouraged, stop their research and simply give up. It means one more child has just lost his chance of having a future, having a real life. One more little boy will not find out what it means to be loved, he will not know how it feels to be someone’s son, one little girl will never be her daddy’s little princess. Their door into the bright future was just loudly shut. Because it is just way too much money…and those future parents will continue dreaming about having a baby, picturing how great it would be to hold a child in their arms but will never actually experience it. Because it is just way too much money.
Living in the Unites States we can buy houses with the money we don’t have, take out loans to drive cars we would never be able to pay off in one day and can spend hundreds of dollars at Starbucks every year. Every month we pay for our car insurance that we might never benefit from, but we get scared when we hear it might be too costly to adopt a child and get confused summing up all the adoption fees. But if you don’t get scared, don’t give up and keep researching, keep finding a way to make it work, keep fighting for your dream of a family, you will find out that you are not alone in it, you will get help along the way. Why do average working people, making 30K per household manage to adopt children internationally? Because they don’t give up, because they keep on fighting and making it work.
Unfortunately, international adoption IS expensive. It involves many people providing various services, a lot of different institutions and organizations with their fees and mandatory payments, communication with several domestic and foreign authorities from at least two governments, which all can’t simply be done by only one or a couple of people. This all comes up to a significant amount of money future parents will need to spend in their adoption fees. However, there are thousands of options that you can use to help you finance your adoption. There are low interest and interest-free adoption loans, employer assistant programs, federal tax credit and in some states even state tax credits, adoption grants, fundraisings, donations from your church or religious institution, even help from your family and friends.
You just need to look for help and you will find it. You will be amazed how many people are willing to help you if you actually ask. And there is no shame in asking for help because you are not asking for yourselves, you are asking for a child who’s life you are about to save. Not everyone can be an adoptive parent but a lot of people want to help a child in need. Your government, your employer, your neighbor, your church community, your friend, your relatives…help can come from anywhere.
At Adoption Ark we also want to help. We wish that every single adoption could be completed for free and all the children in need have found their families. This is yet not possible. We hope one day it will be possible but for now, we want to help you battle with high adoption fees. This month we want to announce several adoption grants we are issuing to our new families and want to tell you about our new assistance program we want to implement.
Colombia Adoption Grant. $2000 is issued to every single family until December 1, 2011 who is starting their adoption from Colombia with us. We are proud of our new Hague Convention program and want to help as many families as possible to adopt children from this beautiful country.
Azerbaijan Adoption Grant. $4000 will be issued to every single new family until December 1, 2011 to help them bring children home from this wonderful country. Azerbaijan is a very small program and because only very few agencies are registered to work in this country we want to help as many families as possible start their Azerbaijani adoption process.
Dominican Republic Adoption Grant. $1500 is still given to every single family enrolling into this program. This program is known for its extended stay in the county but the fees associated with adoption from DR are the lowest! Using our grant it they can be only $13500!
Please, ask us about our Adoption Grants for Adopting Older Children and Children with Special Needs, those can be applicable to many programs and are issued on a case by case basis for families who qualify.
And finally, Adoption Ark is happy to announce our new Assistance Program. Our families with lower income, who are starting their adoption journeys with us for any Hague Convention Country (Bulgaria, Hungary, Colombia, Azerbaijan) can have a chance to finance their adoption monthly instead of coming up with larger sums at once. The only 4 times you will need to come up with a larger amount of money will be upon signing the agreement with the agency ($2000-$3000), paying your documentation fee ($2500-$3500 depending on the country) once all you documents are completed and upon travelling when you pay for the foreign assistance fees ($6000-$8000 depending on the country and which are sometimes split in two payments with your 2 trips to the foreign country several months apart). The rest of the fees can be paid off monthly, which on average comes up to $300 per month. If you want to see if your family can qualify for this adoption assistance program, please contact us and ask for a free pre-qualification form.
Please, keep fighting, keep asking for help and never give up on your dream because it costs too much money. If adoption is in your hearts, if you want to change a life of a child and open the door into his future in the end it will be worth every single penny spent, you can cunt on that!
Marina Snazina
marina.s@adoptionark.org