Waiting for Referral - dossier translated, legalized and registered

Our dossier has made it thru the Ethiopian process, where it was translated, legalized, and registered.


We are now officially waiting for a referral!!
Expected wait time is about 3-4 months. Hopefully it'll be sooner...especially since 'baby girl' is out there in the midst of a drought. Haley's like "mommy, we have to go get her *today*" Maybe we'll have a referral (that we can/will accept) within the next *couple* of months.



Per US Dept of State Intercountry Adoption website
11 steps total - we are awaiting Step 5 (the referral)

Step One - Prospective adoptive parents must take or send all of the required documents already certified and authenticated, to the Ethiopian Embassy in Washington, D.C. for additional authentication. Once the Embassy has completed its authentication, the completed packet is returned to the adoptive parents/agency. Then it's should be mailed to:

Ministry Of Women’s Affairs (MOWA)
Children and Youth Affairs Office, Adoption Team (CYAO)
P.O. Box 1293
Addis Ababa
Ethiopia

MOWA reviews the documents for completeness and creates a dossier on the adoptive parents.
The documents have to be translated.

Step Two - The parents’ dossier is taken to the Claims and Authentication Section of the Protocol Office at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Ethiopia to be authenticated (legalized).

Step Three - The parents’ dossier is returned to CYAO. CYAO will then affix a summary sheet, on which will be noted items such as court decisions, background data on the adopted child or children, and the names of Adoption Committee members who will complete the form at a later date.

Step Four - CYAO submits the parents’ dossier to the Adoption Committee for review and approval to adopt. Only if all the members of the committee agree, and sign the recommendation, is the request approved.

Step Five - Once the Committee has approved the parents’ dossier, a child is selected and referred to the prospective parents to adopt, according to the parents’ preferences for age and sex. The child selected must have its own dossier at MOWA. That dossier describes the child, the child's history, how the child came to be an orphan, and who has legal guardianship of the child. Once a referral is made, the prospective adoptive parent may accept or refuse the referral.

Drought and Starvation

Ethiopian Millions 'Hunger Risk' (via BBC News) in today's news 5/20/08

Six million children in Ethiopia are at risk of acute malnutrition following the failure of rains, the UN children's agency, Unicef, has warned.

More than 60,000 children in two Ethiopian regions require immediate specialist feeding just to survive, Unicef says.

The situation is expected to worsen in the next few months as crops fail.

Aid agencies in Ethiopia say they are short of funds as donors concentrate on the emergencies in China and Burma....


Ethiopia: At Least 3 Million Ethiopians Now Need Food Aid - UN Relief Wing

Some 3.2 million people are now in urgent need of food aid in Ethiopia because of the continued drought in the African country, up from 2.2 million just one month ago, according to the United Nations' Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA)...

...The UN Children's Fund (UNICEF) warns that as many as 6 million children under the age of five are at risk of acute malnutrition....



***
Likely multiple factors at play here: global climate changes/drought; high price of fuel/oil because of...well, we'll refrain from political discussion in this blog; and unequal distribution of wealth worldwide (but, again, we'll leave politics out of this).

Anyway, if everyone helped someone...the world would be a bit better, don'cha think? We hope to change the world for (at least) one child.

A case number...

Yesterday we received a letter from the United States Department of State National Visa Center in New Hampshire. It explained that the letter was to serve as notification that our petition (I171H) has been forwarded to US Embassy in Addis Ababa...and was given a case number (provided). So, when we get to Addis everything should be ready for our interview (and subsequent issuing of the appropriate visas).

Haley's Passport has arrived!!

Super quick turn-around time...again!!

One week and one day.

Our dossier is on it's way to Ethiopia

So, the DC authentication process is complete...
...and it's on it's way to Ethiopia. Yay.

Once there, it has to go thru translation, legalization, and registration. This takes about 3 weeks. After this...we'll be eligible for a referral.

Passport renewal application for our big girl is in....

So, I was doing some reading (actually I was just skimming the literature that accompanied Ian's passport...you know, those little pieces of paper that fall out of the envelope that we typically promptly throw away?) Well, on my way to the trash can...I decided I should at least *look* at the stuff...

...and it said that some (?many) countries will require a passport that's valid for at least 6 months post trip.

Really?

I didn't think you could even renew your passport until within about 6 months of it's expiration. But...apparently...according to this piece of paper...I was mistaken.

So I pulled out everyone's passport to check out the expiration. Well, kids have to renew every 5 years...so Haley's was due to expire in April . That may be cutting it kinda close. And if it turns out we travel later than we thought...we'll be scrambling to renew the passport expeditiously. Rather than do that...

....we applied for a passport renewal for Haley today. It was the same price as Ian's...required a copy of the birth certificate and the old passport; new pictures, and an application. We all had to go together. And the expected time is 4-6 weeks.

note: had we known the above info, i would have just renewed Haley's passport when we applied for Ian's.