What Are the Ways to Support the Adoption Community!

People often think that they can only support the adoption community and the many children in need by adopting children or becoming a foster parent. While adopting a child can be one of the most beautiful acts that a parent might undertake, there are other valuable roles that can be filled by people who want to support the adoption community.

Any caring and compassionate person who wants to support the community of adoption agencies, prospective parents, birthmothers, and children can do so. There are many ways to engage with the community and advance the loving goal of adoption agencies.

Be an Advocate

There are still so many myths around the adoption process and the current state of adoptions in the United States. The costs of adoption, the difficulty of the process, and the characters of the children in need are mysterious to many people.

For instance, many people do not realize that tax credits exist to offset the costs of adoption. They also may not realize that many adoption agencies concern themselves with being as transparent and helpful as possible, rather than just mandating paperwork and interpreting laws. Sometimes myths even exist about the character of children in foster care in need of homes. People might think the children deserve to be where they are or are unwanted. For

all of these myths, you can support the many diverse members of the adoption community by being an advocate, and dispelling these untruths on the spot, whenever they appear.

Volunteer Locally

Most people tend to think that adoption can only be supported through actually going through the process of adopting a child and enlarging one’s family. But it turns out that most adoption agencies and related nonprofit organizations can stand to benefit from volunteer support. Whether that’s through assisting in paperwork or data entry, or assisting agencies with other variable tasks, you can only find out what opportunities exist by calling the agency or nonprofit in question and seeing what’s needed.

Interact Online

Social media platforms have given people in the last decade the opportunity to build communities around subjects of great significance. Adoption is just one subject that has found a place on internet chat rooms, discussion boards, Facebook pages, and Twitter feeds.

Whether you are an avid social media user or just a novice, joining the conversation online can be an easy way to connect with many people in the comfort of your home. Online, you can peruse diverse websites with a broad offering of perspectives and advice. You can chat with individuals whom you share a connection with, and you can also connect with charities, nonprofit organizations, and government bodies that produce online content to help people involved in adoption.

This is a great year to engage the adoption community online. The National Adoption Day Coalition is using Instagram to tell the story of adoptions in America with their ‘One Day Project.’ On National Adoption Day, adoptive families are asked to post pictures of their joy and newfound family on the day they adopted their new family member. Add the hashtag #OneDayProject to your photo engage with this unique and unprecedented project.

To find out more about how you can support the adoption community, visit our volunteer page or make a donation.