Tuesday, January 13, 2009

The goal

I want to extend a sincere thank you to all of you who have donated to our girls' adoption fund. We don't have any way of knowing who has given, so unless you tell us (or someone tells us for you!) we don't have any way of knowing that we need to thank you. I do want to extend a special thank you to another adoptive family who has given to the girls, and especially to their teenage daughter A who gave of her own money to help bring the girls home. So, so sweet, and very appreciated.

Since I'm sure many of you have no idea what that money is going towards, I thought I'd share a little bit about the girls' adoption fund.

We are not allowed to donate to the girls. Since it is tax-deductible, we cannot donate towards something we would benefit from. My goal is to raise $10,000 for the girls through their Reece's Rainbow account. I know it's a lot of money--sadly, that's a little less than half of what we will need. We've already paid over $2000 out of pocket for the adoption, and we anticipate needing about another $10,000 on top of that. If we were to raise $10,000 for the girls through Reece's Rainbow, that would completely cover our facilitator's fees, which covers translations and notarizations of all adoption-related documents, submission of our dossier, interpreting as necessary through the whole process, travel in Kyiv, the girls' passports, and any expediting fees necessary. This is actually a very reasonable fee for the amount of work that is done. However, we will still be responsible for all travel to and from Ukraine, travel to and within the girls' region, lodging in the girls' region, and their visas and medicals (required for US immigration).

I'm going to post a breakdown of our costs on the sidebar of our blog so that people will have a better idea of where the money is going. We do not receive one penny of what goes to Reece's Rainbow, so please don't worry that the money will get redirected. All of it goes directly towards the girls' adoption, not to us. Regardless of how much money we raise, we are committed to adopting the girls and will bring them home one way or another. :)

Thank you for helping us bring our daughters home. It is overwhelming at times to think of the amount of money involved, but your generous gifts have already gotten us nearly 10% to our goal!

3 comments:

The Flying Eagle said...

We flew Luthansa and used the humanitarian discount (I think they were the only ones). Round trip we ended up at 1/2 the rate as the going "disount" airline. Angelina Roman aroman@raptimusa.com. One way is stll cheaper but not as drastic of a discount.

Anonymous said...

When is the estimated time for the girls being brought home with you?

Courtney said...

Julie, we aren't exactly sure, but there's a good chance that if we get our dossier submitted in early February (which is what our facilitator is predicting) that we could travel as early as April. I'm hoping more for May or June, but only God knows when we'll really travel!