Help a student, help children in Ethiopia

As part of a school project, Bektu Conley, a seventh grade student at Northwood Middle School in Spokane, WA is raising money for AHOPE for Children. As part of Charity Week at her school, she is trying to raise $500 to feed the children at AHOPE for one month. She chose AHOPE because she wanted to help them care for HIV positive children in Ethiopia. Like my son, Bektu was adopted from Ethiopia. She was adopted in 2008 at 12 years old.

AHOPE is an extraordinary organization. I have given to them in the past. Help Bektu exceed her goal.

To DONATE visit the webpage that Bektu created: here.

For more information on AHOPE, visit: here.

Talking Race – revisited

Once again, following her bedtime story, my daughter and I had an interesting discussion about skin color. I cannot recall what drove us to this conversation, but in it my daughter told me she wished mommy and dad had black skin color like her. I asked her about why she wished that her mommy, daddy and her all matched. She really couldn’t say why, but she did list off all of her family members who “…have light skin.” This included grandparents, uncles, aunts and cousins, with the exception of her brother.

I then pointed out all of the unique families and families of color that she sees on a regular basis. There are the transracial adoptive families at her school and in our adoptive families playgroup, the Ethiopian family in our neighborhood, and her biracial friend who has an African dad and a Brazilian mom. She pointed out the families she knows with two mommies and asked about one of the transracial families she hasn’t seen in a while.

I asked her what she thought about all these unique families that look a lot like her family, to which she replied: “I’d like to go to sleep now, daddy.”

Even though I could not get to the bottom of her desire for us to be black, I think it was a good conversation for a four-year-old.

A Lesson in Institutionalized Racism

The video post below is by Kevin D. Hofmann and posted at his blog: My Mind on Paper.

The video post is titled:
An Immigration Project: A Lesson in Institutionalized Racism.

His son's experience in an excellent lesson for all of us who have never had to face institutional racism, but must prepare our children to do so. I have been visiting his blog regularly. As an adult adoptee he is an excellent resource for caucasian adoptive parents of African American kids.

Please take a look and then visit Kevin's blog to comment and read other posts.