An agency update (today):

Dear Families,

I hope you are still staying strong. I wanted to send you an email regarding the Abandonment Children’s Issue in Addis Ababa and my conversation with [Name withheld] this morning. I first want to preference this email by saying that the information was presented to me as RUMORED and not that anything has been officially confirmed or announced, but that this is what some agencies and orphanages in Addis have been discussing among each other. So there may be some truth to some of the information. I generally do not post about what’s “rumored” but I just wanted to give you a sense of what it might be looking like in Ethiopia regarding this issue. I will be traveling to Ethiopia on June 13^th for 2 weeks and will look further into this situation while I’m there if it is not resolved before that time.

First of all, my understanding is that the investigation has been completed. This was told to our in country rep by one of the judges. Our rep was at the court to process other families’ adoption cases. This is all of the information that he received from the court and was not given any information regarding what the decision of the investigation is and what was going to be put in place to move forward. The ban has not been lifted as of yet regarding when they will start hearing abandoned children’s cases, as the announcement regarding the investigation or the next steps have not been officially announced. When asked what the decision was, our rep was told to go and find out himself as it is not in the judges power to give that information – it has to be given from a higher authority then her. I asked our rep to go to the proper authority to ask about the results, and he said that it is not an agency issue (except for the agency/agencies who were involved), but that it’s an orphanage issue, and a orphanage director in Addis would have ask for that information . I asked him to have one of the orphanage directors that we work with to go and ask. He noted that no one is going to ask. They want to wait until the orders are officially given, and not rock the boat, so to speak. I did mention to him to have Enat Alem orphanage to go the officials on behalf of our families who are waiting for children from that orphanage. Everyone is concerned about making waves before everything is announced. I will follow up on this when I am in Ethiopia.

[Name withheld] is very hopeful that all of our cases will go through and he has mentioned that even though the information that he is hearing is “rumored”, it’s all positive for the most part.

Unfortunately, our phone conversation disconnected before I could ask further questions or whether he thought your cases would be heard before the courts closed. I tried calling several times after the disconnect but was not able to reach him again. I’ll check in again with you one Monday to let you know if there is anymore information that I have received.

We’ll also be happy to have a conference call with you on Wednesday for those families who would like to be on the call. We’ll email you with the time. If anything more concrete takes place before than were we might need to have the call sooner, we’ll let you know. I know many of you still have questions and concerns. Hopefully this is helpful. At least it looks like it’s moving in the right direction. Again Ethiopia culture is one that doesn’t give out much information until the results are final, but I’ll continue to dig into this and keep you posted.