Hear from three people who all have an adoption connection and are Adoption Champions.
Shegun and Seyi
We became Adoption Champions because we wanted to bring awareness to our community and ultimately help reduce the number of children waiting for families to come forward. Our aim is to help change the negative mindset people have about adoption and for people to see it as a positive, fulfilling and rewarding human act.
For National Adoption Week 2010, we had a coffee morning, an informal evening session & an entire church service dedicated to adoption on Sunday, we used various forms of social network to highlight the issue by advertising our events, writing articles and we got such a great response from it.
Greg signed up to level 3
I am both adopted and am an adoptive parent. I signed up as an adoption champion to spread the word that adoption is amazing. I spoke at a small business seminar telling people about my story and why I went on to adopt my own child and at the end of the session I had three people come up to me wanting to know more – I now know that two of these are going down the process of becoming a ‘forever’ Mum and Dad and adopting themselves. I cannot begin to say how special and rewarding that news is to me.
By becoming an adoption champion you too could spread the word of adoption that in turn could lead to another permanent loving family being created.
Nicola signed up to level 2
I became an Adoption Champion because I believe in the positive side of adoption. We have been blessed with three beautiful children, not easy all the time, but it's given us a real chance to make a difference in their lives. I want others to be able to know they can experience that, and I want to show them the realities of adoption - the difficult parts and the brilliant parts.
During National Adoption week 2010 we did a number of things. I sent out blogs on social media, spoke on local radio stations and held a coffee morning. The aim of the coffee morning was to bring together business colleagues I've met through networking and adopters. This raised the awareness of adoption, the issues involved and the opportunities. It was a great success in terms of raising awareness and was enjoyed by all.
I personally received satisfaction from knowing that some people who didn't know much about adoption learnt something new and hopefully that will spread to others who may be considering adoption in the future.
