Translator: Tijana Mihajlović Reviewer: Denise RQ
Over 20 million abandoned children live on their own on the streets today.
That's about the same population as the entire state of Florida.
Imagine that.
Over one billion children suffer
from at least one form of severe deprivation of a basic need,
such as food, water, and sanitation
just because of their lack of parental guidance.
I am Kaitlyn, and today I’ll be talking about how international adoption
can help abandoned children all around the world.
How often are children abandoned around the world and why is that?
How can international adoption help these children
and keep them out of bad situations, like human trafficking?
It's not only in the developing countries that children are being left alone.
It's a reoccurring thing that happens everywhere.
There are many reasons for this,
such as family's having a lack of housing, which leads to homelessness,
a lack of financial resources, and/or parents abusing drugs,
and are just not able to take care of their children.
Quite often, parents who abandoned their children
are feeling abandoned themselves.
"They're feeling isolated in terms of not having a proper support system,
like other family members to help take care of their children", says Cortez,
who published an article about child abandonment in Deseret News.
Last week in Kearns, Utah,
a child was saved and pulled out of a trashcan.
His mother, only 23 years old, faces attempted homicide charges.
Events like these go on every day that we don't even usually hear about.
For example, Katie Davis, at age 18, decided
that she wanted to do something meaningful with her life.
So she made the decision to move to Uganda.
That isn't exactly a decision most 18-year-old girls would make.
However, it's something that she felt she was called to follow through with.
In her book that I read, "Kisses from Katie",
there are many times where she faced complicated situations,
where she couldn't always help the people that were in need.
However, one day she was walking home and passed by an abandoned house.
She explained, "In the back room, on the dirt floor, were seven children.
They were completely filthy and starving.
One of them was the skinniest human being
so I've ever seen."
Katie looked for their parents, but she couldn't find them,
so she decided to adopt them.
Along with the many other selfless deeds that Katie accomplished in Uganda,
after only one year of living there, she had adopted 14 girls.
That's crazy.
UNICEF, which stands for United Nations International Children's Emergency Fund,
estimates that there are about 18 million children
without known parents globally.
An article that CNN published about international adoption
explains that children who do not live in safe places
and who are alone on the street may be victims of human trafficking.
If they did not have a stable home,
they may be sold into forced labor and sexual exploitation.
This isn't something that only happens in foreign countries;
it's a big mishap in the United States as well.
Nearly one million children enter the sex trade every year.
UNICEF, like I said earlier,
says that there are 18 million children without known parents globally.
This isn't exactly a solvable problem.
However, there are many ways for us to help.
I'm not saying that everybody has to be like Katie Davis
and randomly move to Uganda and adopt 14 little girls,
or be like Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt and adopt 6 kids from different countries,
but there are numerous organizations
that you can donate your time and money to.
Abandonchildrensfund.org is a place located right in Santa Rosa
to help the kids in our community and the children all around the world.
We love the children in our families, we care for the kids in our community,
but where does the love for these children stop?
Do we not love the kids from other countries, races, and religions
as we do our own?
Really think about it.
Love is universal,
so we should care for the kids in need of help all around the world.
Remember, we care for orphans not because we're rescuers,
but because we are rescued.
Thank you.
(Applause)