Reflections on Our 20 Year Journey |
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By: Barbara Graffeo |
| As a founding member, I feel so fortunate to have been here to see New Beginnings grow through the years. We have placed over 2,000 children into loving, caring homes over the last 20 years. It has been an honor for me to be involved with so many wonderful people, including co-workers, adoptive families, workers in foreign countries and especially the children. It is an honor also for New Beginnings to be a part of the building of so many families.
Since our inception, we have been working with Eastern Social Welfare Society in Seoul, Korea. Working with Eastern over those first few years was an educational and productive experience, which has guided New Beginnings since then. Many of the founding members were adoptive parents, much like our families, which gave us a great deal of sensitivity to families going through the challenging processes leading to the completion of an adoption. As an agency our responsibility has been to find and approve families for adoption. We have always approached this responsibility with humility. Our ultimate goal has been to find good, loving homes for orphaned children and that continues to be our mission 20 years later. Some of my most moving memories are those of being present when a child meets their new forever family. In those early years, members of New Beginnings’ staff used to escort children from Korea. I have escorted more than 30 children, sometimes two or three at a time. On a few of those trips I recall walking up and down the aisles for almost fourteen hours trying to comfort a frightened and uncomfortable baby. The transition of leaving their foster mother’s care and love and going off with someone who looks, smells, sounds and handles them differently can be very difficult for some children. However, when they are placed in the arms of their waiting parents, they somehow seem to know it is okay and calm down. It was at that moment that I too knew it would be okay and felt pride in New Beginnings once again in helping to unite a family. From this first meeting of parent and child the adoption story is full of details. There are photos and memories, the first meeting, the first night home, the first day of school. New Beginnings knew that being able to place children with families is the first measure of success. However, we also knew we needed to do more to assure the story told was a happy one. We saw that too often families were not prepared for the adoption or supported once the child arrived. We developed Parent Trainings and Preparation Workshops which I am pleased to say were some of the first available. Now most state programs and almost all agencies mandate some form of training for their families. Over the years our adoption services and programs have expanded and improved. Now we offer a wide array of pre and post adoption workshops and seminars. We just hosted our 3rd annual conference that was excellent. I will be hosting my 2nd conference here in Florida this fall. We worked closely with the Long Island Cultural Appreciation Program to develop Culture Camp. Now that our first generation of children is approaching adulthood, New Beginnings is arranging Motherland Tours to Korea. Every year we host picnics, holiday parties and a Chinese New Year Celebration. These events continue to be very empowering for the children to see that there are so many other families like theirs. We have believed since our inception that an agency must do more than the home study and the placement and continue to work to meet the needs of adoptive families as they grow. The story of adoption, of course, starts well before the day of placement. Working with Eastern Social Welfare Society has been wonderful over these 20 years. They are extremely professional and continue to offer birthmothers extensive care and counseling in making their decision to place for adoption. Over the years we have expanded our programs and developed new ones in other needy countries, and have used Eastern’s example to guide us. Chong Park and Pooja Park, worked hard to develop safe programs, which would be operated with integrity. Developing our own programs, working directly with the people taking care of the children, was our best assurance that this part of the child’s story is one of care and love from the beginning. Seven families, with children from 10 to 21 years of age, were able to add details to those otherwise vague descriptions of life before they were placed for adoption. During last summer’s Korea Motherland Tour these children were able to meet their foster mothers who cared for them while they were in Korea. The kids were amazed to hear how much their foster mother’s remembered about them while caring for them. Instead of only knowing that they were cared for by a wonderful foster mother, they now knew her and had her memories. They hugged, cried (especially the adoptive parents), gave gifts to one another and promised to continue to write. Two of the families had the good fortune of meeting birth family members as well. These are relationships that have continued to this day. The tour later went to Eastern’s facility in Pyongtaek. There we met a dozen young pregnant women who are cared for there. They were in the process of deciding whether they would place their babies for adoption. Each birthmother tearfully told her story and what brought her to this decision. The adoptive parents struggled, again through tears, to express their understanding and appreciation for the birthmothers who had made such a difficult decision. The children tried to reassure the young women with their stories of happiness, and let them know that although they might think about their birthmothers often, they weren’t angry at their decision. This was the first time these families could really experience the depth of feelings and turmoil each of these birthmothers was going through in trying to make a good decision for their babies. It also helped the children to understand just a little more about the reasons why they might have been placed for adoption. This by far was one of the most memorable experiences I have had throughout these twenty years. Being part of the story of adoption is tremendously rewarding. To put into words the depth of love I have for this work is impossible. Having lived adoption through my own life, first growing up adopted and then having had the opportunity to raise five children through adoption has just made it that much more personal. Through New Beginnings I have been blessed to be a part of so many lives. For more than 2,000, families your story is different because of New Beginnings. In closing, I want to personally thank all those who I have come in contact with over these years, building strong, close, supportive, understanding relationships and from whom I have learned so much. We hope you will all join us at our 20th Anniversary celebrations this year. It would be wonderful to see many of the families and their children from our early years. To our families, thank you for letting us be a part of your lives. |
Come Together For Our Celebration |
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By: Cathy Danowski |
| Twenty years ago New Beginnings Family and Children’s Services started out on a journey. Chong Park, Pooja Park, Barbara Graffeo, Shirley Dambois and Maureen Sullivan came together with a dream to create loving families through adoption. Those early days were filled with excitement, learning experiences, ups and downs and love. New Beginnings began its growth as a “family.”
Families celebrate milestones, events and holidays in different ways, but sitting down together at a table to share food, memories and good times is universal. Each family begins to collect “place settings” so that they can set a beautiful table for special events. New Beginnings had its first place setting in Korea in 1985. Our cooperative work with Eastern Social Welfare Society in Korea has brought over 1200 children and their families to our table. We can look at all these children with pride and satisfaction. Our place settings continued to grow and take on a slightly different appearance in 1986 when children from Paraguay began joining the family. They brought all the richness of their Latin American culture to the table. In the same year we also began to unite children from the United States Foster Care System with families. They brought their special gifts and personalities to the family celebrations. In 1988 Mr. and Mrs. Park traveled to the beautiful land of Thailand and a new cooperative venture began. The children of Thailand began to add their grace and beauty to our table. At the same time our program in Latin America expanded to include children from Columbia and more chairs were added around the table. Our arms opened even wider in 1990 when children from Peru and Romania began to join their happy parents. As always, we just set some more places at our table. In 1994, a new branch sprouted on the family tree and children from China and Hong Kong began to join the fun around the table. Later that year the first children from Vietnam began sharing their happy smiles and laughter with us. Another leaf was added to the table in 1998 when children from the Ukraine came to join us at the table. More chairs had to be added in 1999 when the beautiful children from Sakhalin Island, Russia began to join the family. Now, we are celebrating our 20th Anniversary. The table is being set for the big celebration. We have over 2000 different and unique place settings to put on the table. They don’t all match, but they all make the table complete. The different colors, textures, designs and shapes of the dishes add to the beauty of the table. Come, join us as we see old friends, meet new ones, share stories, laugh and rejoice. Come to the table. Pull up a chair. Join us in celebrating at the 20th Annual Picnic or Holiday Party or in our Anniversary Journal. Let us be together as a family. |