Seasons of Change

How swiftly the seasons move, one after the other, year after year. Even if we don't notice how quickly the years go by, our children surely remind us. As each school year starts, we send our wishes with our children as they head to the next grade, the new school, the challenging course they've never taken before. For many of us adoptive parents, these years have been, by turns, joyous and difficult at best, heartbreaking at worst, as we struggle to get our children the help they need.

In FRUA, INC, we say that our long-term goal as parents is to help our children to reach their potential, whatever that may be. But for some of our FRUA families, that can feel like too big a goal; for them the goal is a more limited, often focused on just getting their kids through the school week – or the day – in one piece!

Some years ago, during a particularly tumultuous middle school year, a psychologist who we'd contacted for help gave me a piece of advice. “Don't worry so much about the grades, or having a perfect child right now,” he said about our angry, defiant, brilliant, twice-exceptional son. “Your job is to raise a whole child. By the way, no child is perfect and neither are you.”

Well of course.

The words were blunt, but effective. And we made it through those years, one day at a time.

FRUA's new fiscal year brings emphasis on education resources and awareness

This isn't just the start of the school year for so many of us, it's also the start of our FRUA fiscal year. In July we met in Washington DC for our national board annual meeting, to map our plan of action for this coming year. It's fitting that our first quarter is the July-September time frame, as I've always felt it to be a time of new beginnings. And this year we have a lot in store for you.

We have a new compliment of board members, dedicated to this organization and our mission of providing hope help and community for adoptive families. For those who may not know, the entire leadership of FRUA is volunteer: your national board members, your regional chapter leaders, and your FRUA national committees volunteers and I appreciate every single one of them. I hope you do too.

As the year proceeds you'll be hearing more about our renewed emphasis on educational programming and resources. Leading our FRUA educational efforts will be Terry Mandeville, who is moving from the board position of Outreach to that of Education Chair. Stay tuned for news of the educational topics FRUA will be coordinating with programming partners, both with the FRUA Regional Chapters and directly to FRUA members.

If you haven't given in a while, please do consider a gift to FRUA. We need funds to help us in our work on educational and resource programming, to rebuild our FRUA scholarship fund, and replenish our orphan support fund. Remember, donations are tax deductible: frua.org/donate

Regarding our efforts at raising awareness of our FRUA mission and the success of our FRUA families....there is more news to come very soon, so stay tuned.

Jan Wondra

FRUA National Chair

Parenting...the other 363 Days a Year

Who doesn't want to celebrate Mother's Day and Father's Day? Especially those of us who moved heaven and earth, traveling around the globe, to become parents. I know we surely do. But here, in this message, FRUA celebrates the other 363 days a year of parenthood. The day-after-day, challenge-after challenge, joy-following-joy, messy, sweet, exhilarating, exhausting, sometimes lonely, better-if-shared, thankful days that require patience, love and fortitude. FRUA celebrates all of you, every day, and the families we have built. We celebrate with our eyes open, always focused on our mission; to provide hope, help and community for adoptive families.

Change....

There has been a lot going on at the FRUA, INC national level. Based on the 2013 national survey, this has been a year of change, as we set out to act upon the wishes of members and those who want to belong. Here, some highlights of the changes over the past few months:

Ten FRUA regional chapters

Since earlier this year, With the involvement of the leaders of FRUA chapters, and a recommendation of a FRUA chapter leader task force, FRUA has shifted from inconsistent metro-focused chapters to ten regional chapters, covering all fifty states. The FRUA regional boards are composed of volunteer leaders spread across each region, with volunteer representatives from Parent Organized Districts(PODs) that can bring FRUA families together wherever family clusters are located.

Major contact with our children's birth country embassies

FRUA has made a concerted effort to establish a place at the table regarding national adoption policy, and in helping to keep the doors of adoption open in Eastern European and central Asian countries. Over the past two years, we have significantly stepped up our communication with the embassies of our birth countries, meeting with them, most for the first time, to share information about our family support mission of hope, help and community for adoptive families.

While the next issue of The Family Focus will include a more detailed report, I made formal calls in February and March of 2014, on the embassies of Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan, Bulgaria, Republic of Georgia, Uzbekistan, and Armenia. I'll continue to reach out to more of the twenty two foreign embassies of the countries from which our children have come. Last year I met twice with the Ambassador of Ukraine, and plan to meet with the embassy again this summer.

Last December, continuing our cooperation with The Institute of International Education, FRUA-Colorado hosted a group of independent media Russian journalists at my home for dinner. I remain in touch with some of these journalists, to help get factual information about our families to the Russian people,

I have received a formal invitation to attend a US-Russian Forum on Capitol Hill, June 16-18, representing FRUA. The gathering focuses on areas of cooperation in culture, business and science. Attendees will include the Dept. of State, members of the United States Congress, the Russian Embassy, University of Moscow, and the Russian Cultural center.

New, 21^st century database tools

With the launch next weekend of the new FRUA Member Center, linked to www.frua.org, FRUA will address a major need; making it easier for members to join and renew, adding efficiency for regional chapter leaders, and preparing to create an enhanced member resource center. Stay tuned for the email announcement message on our around 5/24, and after the roll-out, follow this link  to Join or Renew .

Happy May,

Jan Wondra

Acting Chair

FRUA, INC. National Board of Directors

Hope, Help and Community in 2011

“If we don't stand up for children, then we don't stand for much.”
Marian Wright Edelman

Somehow we've reached the year 2011. Some of us in FRUA recall that it was in 1991, twenty years ago, that the doors to international adoption began to swing open in Russia as the former Soviet Union ceased to exist. Can it be that long ago? Many of us now have children in college, approaching the age of twenty or even older, who we adopted in those early years. We didn't know what we didn't know.

While international adoption worldwide has slowed in recent years due both to economic and political factors, it is good to pause and consider these questions; have conditions for the children who remain in orphanage limbo improved? What of our children here? What lies ahead?

For those of us who were in the orphanages very early on, you've told us that conditions are, by and large, much better. But material things, while they improve conditions, do not replace a home and family. FRUA has always supported the tenet that the love of a family is life's greatest blessing and the first fundamental right of every child. Much of our early advocacy was focused on keeping the doors of adoption open. It still is.

For many of us, the road to become parents became the road to parenting a child with challenges. For those children given a chance at a home, a family and a future, the outcomes have been, by and large successful. But not, as many FRUA parents know, without trials and tribulations. Our second advocacy role as parents has been and continues to be, to get our children the help they need to be successful.

The extension of FRUA's role in helping parents help our children has always been to support the whole family, offering much needed hope and a supportive community for adoptive families. The role of the FRUA community, has been a major factor in our daughter's success in overcoming early challenges; and I believe our continued involvement into and through her teen years has helped make her the confident, successful college student she is today.

FRUA has not forgotten the children left behind. Just in the past year, FRUA's active Orphanage Support program have put your donations and bequests to work in orphanage projects in Georgia, Ukraine, Poland, and Kazakhstan. Help us do more in 2011 – both with orphanages and in programs for FRUA kids here. We are now set up to take stock gifts and the more funds we receive, the more we can do together. That donation envelope you got with our annual report? Don't throw it away. This year, resolve to give more – of your time and in donations -- so that FRUA can continue to provide more hope, more help and more community to those it is here to serve.

Jan Wondra
Vice Chair
FRUA National Board of Directors

Extending Hope, Help and Community to Adoptive Families

FRUA NATIONAL VOICE


If you're reading this, you've probably already discovered that FRUA has a lot going on these days! From regional chapter activities to national orphanage support projects, to the FRUA Scholarship and expanding support for our teens, FRUA is on the move.

Having launched our new website at the dawn of 2010, this blog initiates a closer dialog between national leadership and you - our membership! While our organizational structure includes regional chapter leadership, FRUA's new focus on community means that we at the national level will be working harder than ever to understand your needs and to find and develop resources to help FRUA families. Over time, you'll hear from each of us on the national board as we talk about the various committees and projects on which we work.

For those who have simply discovered this blog, or just typed in www.frua.org , the initials “F-R-U-A” stand for Families for Russian and Ukrainian Adoption and, as we are so careful to add, that includes neighboring countries. We were born as a 501(c)(3) parent support group in 1994, the year that adoptions in the former Soviet bloc countries began to take off. Within two weeks of beginning as a group in the DC area, we added our first regional chapter. Nearly 16 years later, we are members of the Joint Council on International Adoption Services, new chapters continue to form, your all-volunteer, national leadership is geographically dispersed throughout North America, and our website receives traffic from 84 countries around the world.

While our trusty FRUA Chatroom continues to be extremely popular, new avenues of electronic communication are opening. The FRUA FaceBook page, launched this past winter, provides adults a place to discuss their needs and post chapter or local events. Our new FRUA Teen FaceBook (strictly for our FRUA teens) allows them to share experiences as they process their own identities and meet their challenges. As always, our excellent membership journal, The Family Focus, continues to be mailed quarterly to FRUA members.

Many more exciting things are yet to come as the year progresses. We invite you to explore the new website, join in the FaceBook conversations, and send us your thoughts and suggestions on ways we can help your family and your chapters.

Of FRUA members – we ask two things. First, get involved at your chapter level. FRUA works because our volunteers work. You'll make life-long connections that will bring you help and hope and make you a part of community. Second, if you know people who have adopted in Russia, or Moldova, or Kazakhstan or other former Soviet bloc countries -- and they aren't FRUA members -- invite them to JOIN FRUA NOW! Membership is important because without the small membership dues, our family resource work and FRUA's orphanage support work cannot happen!


Jan Johnson Wondra
Vice Chair
FRUA National Board of Directors


©2010 Families for Russian and Ukrainian Adoption