Over 143 million children worldwide have been orphaned, abandoned, or taken from their parents due to extreme abuse or neglect. These children live in foster homes, institutions, and on the streets. For many of these children, adoption into a loving family is the right thing. Gift of Adoption addresses the needs of waiting children by providing grants to qualified parents to complete the process - giving children without families permanent homes and the chance to thrive. When you help a child get adopted you are giving him access to the most tried and true social service of all, a family. And the dignity that comes from being a regular part of a family is transformative and profound. Meet Jeremiah Jeremiah is a one-year-old boy who was abandoned at the hospital shortly after his birth. He suffered from exposure to a variety of substances during pregnancy. Upon hearing about Jeremiah, Dorothy and Robert decided to act. They knew if Jeremiah was not adopted quickly, he would end up in foster care due to his birth circumstances. Today there are more than 500,000 children in foster care in the United States. 129,000 are currently eligible for adoption. Once in foster care, the average child waits five years to be adopted and each year 20% of these children exit foster care at the age of 18 without a family. A grant from Gift of Adoption allowed Dorothy and Robert to adopt Jeremiah and keep him from ever becoming a part of these statistics.
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