News Information

• NEWS_POSTED_BY: Haiti Place
• NEWS_POSTED_ON: May 12, 2015
• Views : 646
• Category : General News
• Description : In this April 6, 2015 photo, five-year-old Salvador Geraldy is pushed by Johenne Lissa, 12, as they play at the Mercy & Sharing residential center in the community of Williamson, Arcahaie, Haiti. Geraldy was three-years-old when his parents abandoned him at a government hospital, and Lissa, a special needs child, was found abandoned in the street when she was seven. (AP Photo/Dieu Nalio Chery)
  
  By BEN FOX and DAVID CRARY of the Associated Press
  
  Posted May 11, 2015 at 12:00 PM
• Location : Port-au-Prince, Ouest, Haiti
• Website : http://www.pjstar.com/article/20150511/NEWS/150519937/1994/NEWS/?Start=1

Overview

• PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti — Anne-Marie Saintou walks with a megaphone along the dusty lanes of a Haitian fishing village, imploring people not to make the same mistake she did.
  
  "Ladies, say 'NO!' she shouts. "We will not give away our children anymore."
  
  Saintou is part of a public awareness campaign that reflects a growing disenchantment with international adoption in Haiti. Women are going out daily to warn poor Haitians about recruiters for orphanages who roam the countryside offering money, or false promises, to desperate parents struggling to raise children in the Western Hemisphere's most impoverished country.
  
  She speaks from bitter personal experience.
  
  The 42-year-old year old, walking the unpaved streets in a long skirt and blouse with two companions, said she placed her 3-year-old daughter, Mikerline, up for adoption 12 years go with the understanding that the child would get an education and come back. She received photos and a letter but lost contact after three years. "I never heard from her again."
  
  An overhaul of the child-welfare system is drawing wide praise for addressing serious flaws. Some were exposed in the chaotic aftermath of the devastating January 2010 earthquake, and others by accounts from people like Saintou, victimized by spotty regulation in a country that has become a favored choice for Americans seeking a child.
  
  Read more here >>