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How to Fund Your Adoption: a Q&A With The Adoption Finance Coach

An interview with Kelly Ellison, creator of “Your Adoption Finance Coach,” whose team of coaches works with families across the U.S. to help create a comprehensive financial plan that matches their adoption plan. The service is free for families in the Holt adoption process, and families that use the Your Adoption Finance Coach system typically raise between $5,000 and $15,000 for their adoptions. 

This Q&A is an edited version of the original interview. 

Kelly Ellison is the creator of Your Adoption Finance Coach. She holds a master’s degree in business administration, has worked in the nonprofit sector for over 25 years and is also an adoptive parent herself.
Kelly Ellison is the creator of Your Adoption Finance Coach. She holds a master’s degree in business administration, has worked in the nonprofit sector for over 25 years and is also an international adoptive parent.

How did you become the “Adoption Finance Coach”?

I am an adoptive parent myself. My husband and I brought our daughter home from China in 2007. … Prior to that I was in the nonprofit sector, so my lens on life was really about fundraising and community involvement and development. And so it just became very apparent to me going through the adoption process myself that there was just a huge gap between the adoptive family and the money that’s affiliated with the high cost of adoption. Continue reading “How to Fund Your Adoption: a Q&A With The Adoption Finance Coach”

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We Are So Thankful For You

We are so thankful for you.

We are thankful for your compassion for children growing up in orphanages without parents. For families struggling to survive a life of poverty. For single mothers and fathers who need help parenting on their own. For children who spend their days digging through trash in search of food. For girls who deserve just as much as their brothers to go to school. For mothers and fathers, sons and daughters who are always living on the edge of crisis and separation. Continue reading “We Are So Thankful For You”

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New Children’s Book Gives Voice to Unknowns in Adoption

Author (and Holt mom!) Sarah Hopper has written a book about adoption for children, ages 3-8 years old. Called “Tiger and Lily Together,” the book was recently released and is now available on Amazon or at Barnes & Noble.

Every child who leaves one home to move to another is faced with worries, hopes, questions and preconceptions. And every child joins their adoptive family with a ‘tiger’ like Lily’s in the new adoption book “Tiger and Lily Together” by Holt adoptive mom Sarah Hopper.

Continue reading “New Children’s Book Gives Voice to Unknowns in Adoption”

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5 Reasons We’re Thankful for Sponsors and Donors Like You

As we approach the national day of giving thanks, we’d like to share a few of the reasons we’re so thankful for Holt child sponsors and donors. It was hard to narrow it down to such a short list, but here are our top five:

Mary Luz thought she might have to make the heartbreaking decision to leave her children in someone else’s care. But then she discovered a Holt child sponsor and donor-supported program in her community.
Mary Luz thought she might have to make the heartbreaking decision to leave her children in someone else’s care. But then she discovered a Holt child sponsor and donor-supported program in her community.

1. You help children stay in the loving care of their families.

Poverty and hunger make people do desperate things, including placing their children in someone else’s care. But as a Holt child sponsor, you prevent children from needlessly growing up apart from their families. You help provide everything a child needs to thrive right where they are, from nourishing food to safe shelter to job skills training for their parents. Your monthly gifts mean that parents never have to make the heartbreaking decision to leave their child at the gates of an orphanage. And a child never has to experience the trauma of separating from their family. Continue reading “5 Reasons We’re Thankful for Sponsors and Donors Like You”

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Giving Tuesday 2020: Rising Food Costs, Hungry Children

The cost of basic food has risen all around the world because of the pandemic, and families living in poverty can’t keep up. But this Giving Tuesday, Holt donors have the chance to do something about it and feed a hungry child. 

Can you imagine not having enough food to feed your child?

This is the heartbreaking reality for so many families living in poverty around the world. Unfortunately, food scarcity is nothing new to families working each day, hoping to make enough daily wage to buy food. But in 2020, there are new reasons why children are going hungry. (The same reason why Holt’s 2020 Giving Tuesday campaign is all about giving food to hungry children!)

Here’s why children are going hungry:

Continue reading “Giving Tuesday 2020: Rising Food Costs, Hungry Children”

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Four Things to Consider When Sharing Your Family’s Adoption Story

After 15 years of blogging about her adoptive family of 12 — and recently sharing their story with the world in the documentary “Hayden and Her Family”— Elizabeth Curry has learned a few things about what, how, when and when not to share about her children and their lives growing up in a multiracial, international adoptive family. Here are Elizabeth’s four key pieces of advice to consider when sharing about your family and your family’s adoption story.

This story is part two in a series. Click here to read part one, “How Our Family Became the Subject of a Documentary.” Continue reading “Four Things to Consider When Sharing Your Family’s Adoption Story”

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How You Lit Up the Dark for Kids in Uganda

By providing solar lamps, sponsors and donors are helping children in Uganda learn at home during the COVID-19 pandemic. 

Around the world, the COVID-19 pandemic has created so many challenges for the children and families sponsors and donors support through Holt International. With schools closed and families isolating at home, one of the greatest challenges parents face is how to keep their kids learning outside the traditional classroom setting.

From country to country, the needs are a little different. In many places, access to remote learning devices like phones and tablets is a major obstacle. In some countries, lessons are broadcast via television — making it difficult for families who don’t own a TV. But in the rural farming communities where sponsored children live in Uganda, it’s not a lack of devices that keeps kids from learning— but a lack of electricity. Children are struggling to complete their schoolwork in the dark! Continue reading “How You Lit Up the Dark for Kids in Uganda”

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A Loving Home for Bo

Because of your generous gifts, Bo (center) has a safe place to live and plenty to eat.

When Bo lost both of his parents, Holt donors helped provide a safe and nurturing home. 

Bo had no one to take care of him after his mother died. Bo lived with his father, but his father was HIV-positive and too sick to care for his son. Bo had also contracted the virus from his parents. In China, a huge stigma continues to surround HIV and everyone in Bo’s village was afraid of catching the virus if they came close to Bo and his father. They were shunned by their community.

No one would help them.

But Holt donors were not afraid to help Bo! You helped Bo move to one of Holt’s group homes for children living with HIV in China. Here, Bo began to receive the nutrition, education and medical care he needs. You also made it possible for him to be taken care of by people who understand his condition and treat him with love and kindness.

Continue reading “A Loving Home for Bo”

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The Only Home He Knew

When a tragic fire burns down an orphanage in Haiti, Holt donors immediately step up to provide nourishing food, safe shelter and psychological support for the 28 children who survive — including one boy who lost the only home he ever knew.

Samuel with a life skills trainer at the transit center where he has stayed since the fire at his orphanage in Haiti.
Samuel with a life skills trainer at the transit center where he has stayed since the fire at his orphanage in Haiti.

Ten-year-old Samuel can’t remember how old he was when his mom left him at an orphanage in Fermathe, a city just south of Port-au-Prince in Haiti. He was little, though — around 3 or 4 — and he remembers that his mom visited him for a while afterward. Until she didn’t. Continue reading “The Only Home He Knew”