November is National Adoption Month!

My Fellow Compassionate Capitalists:

One of the core principles that I’ve always taught my children……along with anyone that I have coached, mentored, or at any speaking engagement is:

Money is like oxygen, the more you have the easier it is to breathe. The easier it is to breathe the bigger the difference you can make in the world!

I share this with you because the month of November is National Adoption Awareness Month.

What does this have to do with money and making a difference? Let me explain by telling you a bit of my story.

My birth mother was 14 years old when she got pregnant with me. The sperm donor was 25. My younger brothers and I grew up in extreme poverty and were carted back and forth, in and out of multiple homes my whole childhood. After working to get my brothers adopted by their birth fathers, I eventually was adopted when I was 16. Just before I was adopted….the home that I was living in had drug dealers in it. So being adopted age 16 into a loving home changed the course of my life forever. For this, I am forever grateful to my adoptive parents.

After my late husband and I had been married a few years, we discovered that I was unable to conceive and therefore we were unable to have children of our own. It was during that painful journey that we learned about Fost/Adopt. What this means is there are children that go into the foster care system and will stay there until they turn 18. They become wards of the state/court because their parents are incarcerated or have not gotten their lives back on track to get their children. The parental rights get severed and children then become adoptable. Hence the term Fost/Adopt. My late husband and I went on to adopt out of the foster care system four-month-old twins, a boy and a girl. I have been proud to be their momma ever since.

Through my own journey, along with adopting my twins, I learned about the harsh reality of the foster care system. It inspired me to start my own nonprofit foundation (BCEF) that focuses on educating, inspiring, connecting, and empowering families to adopt all of the eligible foster kids currently in the system.

I believe that we can get this done in my lifetime and here’s my plan: There’s over 500,000 children in the US foster care system. 350,000 of these children are available for adoption at any given time.

There is an agency that focuses on this type of adoption, and by working with them it costs less than $1000 to adopt.

There are more than 350,000 congregations in this country. If each congregation took on finding one family to adopt one child……..we could absolutely get this done within our lifetime.

The reality and blessing is that there are billions of dollars of taxpayers money being used to keep these children in foster care. When these children are adopted that relieves the American tax payer.

However, the saddest part of this stark reality is that all too often……when the children are not adopted by age 18 they experience what is known as black trash bag day. On their 18th birthday they are given a black trash bag to put all of their belongings in. They are then kicked out of whatever home that they are in at the time with no explanation and no resources. The state sanctioned foster family is no longer financially benefiting from taking care of them. These children, because they have no family and no resources……. statistically end up on drugs, in prostitution, homeless, and incarcerated. This costs the taxpayers billions of dollars more.

When children are adopted and are given a family, they have opportunities and options and resources. They have a home base for support as they journey through life. My vision and hope is…….if 1% of these 350,000 children that gets adopted gets as inspired as I got, and decides to go make a difference in the world……what a world it would be. To me this is a game worth playing!

My nonprofit focuses on partnering with churches, and these specialized adoption agencies, to get the message out. To help facilitate getting these children adopted by wonderful families. If you feel the call to be a part of making a difference and would like to donate, please reach out and let us know.

Circling back to the beginning……..when I teach an audience about money….I invite them to consider digging down deep inside and figure out the difference that they are here to make. Adding commas to bank accounts is like oxygen………the more you have the easier it is to breathe. The more you have…….the bigger the difference you can make in the world! Ultimately….. the biggest difference you can make is showing others how to “NEVER awake from the American Dream”.