LOCAL ADOPTION
When the doors for international adoption began closing, Grace Center, through the leadership of Director Amy Minard, started the first local adoption program in Ethiopia. This is a program that helps Ethiopian families to adopt children. We have been overwhelmed by the response of how many families within Ethiopia have now been blessed by adoption. Many people had just never thought about adopting. Since we have been able to educate churches and communities and all of Ethiopia through the use of tv advertisements, so many families have grown through adoption.
FOSTER CARE
We are also a long-term home for about 50 children through our foster care program and children’s home. Foster Care didn’t exist in Ethiopia before Grace Center. We have been able to start a program that will provide all the love and care these children need by renting houses in the neighborhood, having house moms as well as our administrative staff members living on site. We are family for these children. We have even been able to see these children get married, send these children to college and help them start careers.
TEMPORARY CARE
Grace Center has the only live-in temporary care facility, that allows families options other than permanently abandoning their children. When a mother is sick and has no other support, her child can stay in Grace Temporary Care. Grace Center also has a reunifications officer that seeks out relatives for the children when a caregiver dies or a mother abandons the child. Grace Center has been able to successfully reunify over 100 children.
CHILD ABANDONMENT PREVENTION HOTLINE
Many mothers are very young and give birth alone on the street. Many don’t know what to do and feel they have nowhere to turn. They walk away and leave their infants on the ground. A few years ago, after seeing a billboard sign in Florida that said “Don’t abandon your baby. Please call...” through God’s leading, we started the first emergency number in all of Ethiopia. Ethiopia has no 9-1-1. We started a hotline women can call or text when they feel they have no choice but to abandon their child. We had a great response to this after sending text messages out to millions of people, letting them know they have other options. Hundreds of mothers and babies have been saved. We have even had pregnant women calling because they were wanting to have an abortion. After counseling them, every single pregnant woman we have talked to decided to choose life for her baby.
