[ellasmum]

Hello Belarusian group!

Our family is "paper-ready" and excited to adopt a toddler from Belarus. We are having trouble deciding which agency to choose and have narrowed it (by half!) to these three. I'm especially interested to know if anyone has used Angeldance. I know the director has been involved with adoption for many years, but as her agency is new, I haven't met anyone who has used their services. Have any of you had an experience (good or bad)adopting via Angeldance?

I've got good vibes on World Partners in general, although their Belarus program is also new.

IAG, I know is good, but very expensive.

Hmmmm. What to do? What to do?

Any advice from you will be very much appreciated!

Thanks and good luck to you all on your adoption journeys.

[cawicker]

We're considering Belarus too, and have heard that there are only 8 agencies licensed there, but I can't seem to find the list on the embassy page or anywhere else. Can you tell me what agencies you've researched, and how you narrowed down the choices? And what is the time frame for referral and placement? Thanks. You may respond personally if you wish to cawicker@earthlink.net.

Also, why have you chosen Belarus? Was it the caretaker to child ratio at the orphanges?

Carol

[ellasmum]

Hi Carol,

Congrats on your Belarus choice. We are so excited about it. Mainly we picked Belarus for the extremely practical reason of one trip. My husband gets very few days off per year due to the nature of his business, so two trips or a three week trip was very hard for us. I don't know about the caretaker to child ratio, but the few people I know with Belarussian children were very happy with the orphanages. Originally, I would have liked to have gone to Kazakhstan b/c of the really nice orphanages there, but the trip was too long. Let me see if I can think of the accredited agencies. The list is somewhere in this Belarus section of the site, if I don't think of them all. They are:
International Assistance Group
World Partners
Angeldance
God's Families International (?)
Small World Adoptions
Nightlight
International Adoptions. (??).. (unsure of this name, it's in Florida)
and maybe... Happy Family
As I say, I'm not certain on some of these names. Look deeper into this site and you'll come across the real list.
I ordered a good cd for learning phrases of Russian especially for parents adopting a child from AdoptShoppe. It's the one by Thersa Kelleher and quite good!
We are still narrowed to those three agencies and I'm hoping someone will give me some feedback, b/c we are having a tough time choosing!
Good luck to you.

[ellasmum]

haha. i'm reading my own reply here and I see "... adopting a child from AdoptShoppe". What I meant was that the cd was ordered from AdoptShoppe.com (not the child!) Hope you got that!

[red7267]

Hello...I replied to you in the other thread about Angeldance..good luck with your adoption process!! ;c)

[peggylive]

I used IAG to adopt my son Thomas back in Feb and I couldn't be happier with them. They are more expensive,but they do absolutely everything for you from getting your apostilles to arranging your travel. We were so burnt out from our infertility experiences that we really appreciated the extra hand holding.
Tommy was just under 9 months old at the time of our travel.
He's almost 14 months old now and doing great. Peggy

[oh,theplacesyou'llgo]

ellasmom,

if you are still available, is your child home from belarus.
my husband (half-latvian) and i are beginning our adoption and wondered who you chose and how it went.
hope that is ok....please email at debnatale@mindspring.com