Transcriber: Ola Żądło Reviewer: Anna Sobota
Snow White,
Cinderella,
Bruce Wayne,
Bambi,
Aladdin,
Peter Parker,
Elsa,
Mowgli -
these fairy tale characters and superheroes
have some common traits.
They're all beloved, they're all brave, and they're all orphans.
Why is it orphanhood is such a common and compelling theme
that we see in our favorite stories?
It’s because on some elemental level,
we can connect,
no matter what our families look like,
on their desperate need to know that they belong.
When I think about belonging,
I think about these characters
and their ability to overcome that challenge.
When we’re tiny infants, we need people to survive,
everything from
the care that parents give us to have us be protected.
I mean, think about it:
we’re not that fast, we can’t fly,
we don’t have very sharp teeth and nails to protect us from predators.
What’s allowed us to evolutionarily survive all this time
is our strength in being together.
In 2014, I found myself on an unexpected path
to learn the importance of belonging like never before.
I met a man named Joe Ritchie,
one of the greatest option traders of all time.
For the first time in person at my friend Deborra-Lee Furness’s home.
I was helping Deb start a new non-profit
to advocate for vulnerable children and orphans,
a topic she was very passionate about
as she had adopted her two beautiful children.
We were really excited to get someone like Joe involved in the movement
because he had helped many presidents in Africa overcome nationwide issues.
As Deb spoke about the orphan worldwide crisis,
I saw Joe’s heart set on fire.
And he and I bonded over the idea that we could look upstream
and solve a host of issues before they even become a problem
just by focusing on the family.
What’s interesting is that I knew that
our non-profit needed Joe, his expertise, his wisdom, his connections.
But what I didn’t know is that I needed Joe.
Back then, I was really struggling to feel like I belonged
with some of the people that I cared about most in this world.
Joe stepped in and sharing his community, his heart pouring into my life,
helping me feel loved,
and he really helped me understand that
I deserved to be loved, that I deserved to belong.
We've learned a lot of great things along the way of helping vulnerable children.
But when we step out
and we see that billions of dollars are being poured in every year
to the orphan crisis, and yet it still seems to be getting worse,
we have to ask ourselves, what’s going on?
It seems that actually
a lot of what people think about orphans just simply isn’t true.
Joe always said, “You have to understand a problem in order to solve it”.
So I’m going to share today three myths that get in the way
of best practice solutions and helping vulnerable children
and foster children around the world.
Myth number one:
there are no orphans in the United States.
For decades, the foster care system
has been a largely invisible crisis here in America.
According to the administration of family and children,
there are over 400 000 kids every year in our system.
Most of them just need a loving foster family to take care of them
till they can be returned to their biological family.
But a hundred thousand of those can never return to their families of origin;
due to severe neglect and abuse their parental rights are terminated.
Those kids need to be adopted,
and when they aren’t, the consequences are devastating.
The Annie E. Casey Foundation estimates
that 20 000 kids every year will age out of the system, and when they do,
no one will be there to cheer for them at graduation,
to walk them down the aisle at their wedding,
to even be there for them to call as they need advice,
as they enter adulthood.
Lots of people think that we have no orphans in the United States
but these kids are our orphans.
Myth number two:
children living in orphanages around the world have no living parents.
A kid’s parents die and they get sent to the orphanage, right?
The truth is, poverty is what gets kids into orphanages.
According to the Better Care Network,
about 80 % of all orphans living in orphanages around the world
have at least one living parent,
and virtually all have extended living family.
Take Marcus, for example, who Joe introduced me to.
Marcus, growing up was known as number 171,
living in an orphanage with hundreds of kids who all had living parents.
Marcus was placed there when growing up in poverty
his dad left and his mom, working 16 hours a week to try to just make ends meet,
face the impossible decision to place mid-age six into an orphanage.
At home, there was no food,
but in the orphanage there was no love.
And despite these kids having their basic needs met,
they were still on their own.
Myth number three:
this problem of orphans can’t be solved.
This is perhaps the most insidious myth of all,
because it absolutely can.
And there’re people around the world who are doing it right now.
Take, for example,
this incredible non-profit here in the United States.
They work with welfare, child welfare,
and they make stunning videos of children that humanize them,
personalize them, show their hopes, their dreams,
their ambitions, and they show them the faith communities,
which makes them exponentially more likely to be adopted.
And, at the same time,
they work with government and the general public and media
to try to encourage more sign ups for foster children,
and then, get people to support those foster families.
Because to sign up foster families, to take those children, I should say,
and then, get families to support those families,
not everybody has to foster, adopt.
You can just support a family who’s made that incredible commitment.
What’s stunning is they’ve had so much success
that in places around the United States, they’ve changed who’s waiting.
And instead of having kids on waiting list to be adopted,
there’s families waiting to adopt.
How cool is that?
(Applause)
In Rwanda after the genocide,
hundreds of thousands of children were left orphaned.
Faith leaders took action
and they found
church leaders to actually identify a family in their congregation
that would soak up an orphan out of the orphanage
and then, that church would support that family to make it possible.
And by focusing on family instead of institutions
with specialized organizations that government has actually achieved,
get this -
Rwanda is now the first orphanage-free country in Africa.
(Applause)
Other organizations are repurposing orphanages,
and what they’re doing is turning them into community centers
where parents can get vocational education and lift them out of poverty
or give child care.
So that little kids like Marcus can go home at night to their mom.
You know, we can actually repurpose the money that we’re sending
and instead of focusing on orphanages and long term warehousing of kids,
put it towards at risk families so they never get separated in the first place.
The results are amazing.
(Applause)
Thank you.
And one of the coolest things that have come out recently
that is from the sector is in 2019,
nearly every country signed
what’s called the Declaration of the Rights of the Child,
where countries pledge to focus instead of on orphanages and foreign adoption,
focus on local extended family adopting
and getting at-risk families that support they needs
so kids can be where they belong - home.
(Applause)
These are great myths to know,
and there’re many more you can learn about.
But I think back on my struggle
and I really do feel so grateful for my friend Joe,
who stepped in when I felt deep shame and gave me the love I needed
and filled that gap in my heart.
Earlier this year, Joe passed away.
It was one of the greatest losses I've ever experienced.
But he also gave me one of the greatest gifts of my life -
to know that I belong.
I hope every one of you feels cherished in your community.
I hope that you're fully known and chosen.
And if you are, I hope you give that gift to others today.
You know what’s so great?
It is that I met Joe at Deborra-Lee Furness’s home.
Her husband, Hugh Jackman, many of you may know,
has played incredibly cool characters
in powerful orphan’s stories,
from Captain Hook in “Pan” to “Wolverine”
to “The Greatest Showman’s” P.T. Barnum.
But for Joe and I, our favorite was always Jean Valjean of Les Mis,
a man who pledged to a dying woman that he would take in her little Cosette
and love her as her own.
Joe often poetically pointed out that
you think it’s a story of a man saving an orphan,
when in reality, it was the story of a man being saved by an orphan.
Perhaps that’s the brilliant plot twist of the hero that helps the orphaned hero.
Perhaps we gained something remarkable ourselves
when we give the gift of belonging.
Maybe, just maybe,
Joe gained something special when he gave his heart to me and so many others.
I can imagine a twinkle in his eye when I say this.
Either way, I know what he did for me,
and I pray that I have the courage to muster the integrity to pay that forward
because it truly changes lives,
perhaps most importantly, our own.
Thank you.
(Applause)