I somehow managed to get myself sucked into not only volunteering but chairing part of a huge adoption event that our agency for Addy put on. The past few months my group has been meeting, planning, and preparing and yesterday it finally came to fruition! There were somewhere around 1200 people there! Each country that the agency has or current does adoptions through had their own area which was decorated with cultural items, had games, activities, and had crafts that related to that culture. There was an area for cultural food vendors and cultural merchandise vendors, bouncy houses, a silent auction, and a main stage for cultural performers. All of the proceeds then are going not toward adoption but toward their humanitarian aid projects in each country.
So our section, Domestic Infant & Waiting Children (basically USA), we had a little harder time than the other countries since we didn't want to do a big USA theme (cowboy, carnival, etc). We looked at the other countries represented and tried to find things that would for for African American kids since they do many AA adoptions through both domestic and the waiting children programs. And wanted to feature the birthmom since they are a huge part in domestic adoptions. So the 4 activities in our area were..... tattoo/face painting, scrapbook/lifebook page making, African American Hair Demos, and and African American Trivia game. For decorations we did the traditional red white and blue. We had a birth parent who placed 15 years ago and she wrote a poem to her son and let us share it on a big poster board. It was amazing! She has a very open relationship with her son and we were honored to be able to share some of her story. We had information about the waiting children program and information about lifebooks, etc. Our performer on the main stage was AMAZING! It was a multicultural group who sang GLEE style. It was great!
Our area did really well! The face painting was a huge hit! The trivia game kids did really well at (granted most made comments about just learning it at school since February was African American History month), the hair station had lots of product questions, and the lifebook pages were made by tons of families! The place was huge so it didn't feel too busy and people didn't have to wait in lines very much since there was tons to do!
It was a lot of work but it all came together for a wonderful day! A BIG thank you to everyone in my group!
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