Adoptee Empowerment Project (AEP)

MAVIN Foundation has launched a multi-year, adoptee-led project to identify what international adoptees and their families need to foster connectedness and healthy cultural identities. Once identified, the project will work with adoptees to implement the project's vision. The project is funded by a $75,000 grant from the W. K. Kellogg Foundation of Battle Creek, Michigan.

The Immigration and Naturalization Service reports that U.S. parents adopt approximately 20,000 children annually from over three-dozen countries. Although today there is a considerable body of resources related to adoption, adoptees and adoptee perspectives often remain excluded from leadership roles in adoption organizations and from the creation of adoption policy and research.

"Today there are generations of adult adoptees who are eager to contribute their perspectives to the adoption discourse," says Kelly Brownlee, the project's manager, who was adopted from Vietnam in 1975. "Having lived the experience ourselves, adoptees are uniquely equipped to support adoptive parents, agencies, and the next generation of adoptees."

Starting in July 2005, the Adoptee Empowerment Project worked with dozens of adoptee-led organizations to initiate a community needs assessment. In the fall, the project will take this information into online, telephone, and face-to-face forums. The outcome of these activities will be to design an innovative, adoptee-led project to launch in 2006. In the interim, the project will also help to identify program support to strengthen the infrastructure of existing adoptee-led organizations.

For more information, please visit the project website: www.empoweredadoptees.org.

For more information, please contact: Kelly Brownlee, Project Manager.