For over 26 years we have had a long-distance adoption with AFN. It all started during my engagement with what has now become my husband.
One year, at Christmas time, I suggested to him that we should not give each other the gift but allocate the money we would spend (maybe a little more because we were not actually giving each other major gifts) to a long-distance adoption I had heard about.
Both of us were working and still staying at home with our parents, so everything we were earning was for our future, to be able to buy a house, furniture, wedding expenses, etc., but we felt enormously fortunate to be able to make these plans and wanted to share a small part of our money with someone who didn’t have the same opportunities as we did.
“We felt enormously fortunate to be able to do these projects, and we wanted to share a small part of our money with someone who had not had the same opportunities as we had.”
This has continued and continues to this day, and over the years we have come to know realities of poverty even if only through photos and update letters from the Bukas Palad project in the Philippines. What’s more, for a few years a very dear friend of ours lived in the Philippines, so we felt we “knew” that land more closely.
So when in 2009, there was the typhoon in addition to long-distance adoption we participated in fundraising for the affected populations whose photos our friend would email us and share with us the needs he encountered, as well as through him we were able to help a girl who was living with her family in precarious conditions especially regarding housing. It had struck us that by going to the center in Bukas Palad she was getting an ‘education and at least one meal, but that the rest of her family on the other hand was in poverty and this did not leave us alone. So through our friend we were able to get him extra help with which to buy household linens, a carpet that served as a floor, they fixed her house a bit, etc. )
Over the years we have been entrusted as long-distance support with several students who have attended the Bukas Palad center, and of each we have learned about family stories, precariousness and academic successes. The last girl has completed her studies and is now working so we have been assigned a new girl. Among the many we were able to help, we had been struck by the story of a girl who told us that her dad was a truck driver (like my husband) and that her mom after a long period of illness had had complications and died of kidney problems.
We now feel connected to the Bukas Palad project as if we have contributed to its birth and growth. It is not just a long-distance adoption; it is now a bond with that land.
We thank you for all that you as an association have done over the years, giving us also the opportunity to participate in a splendid project!
Fabiola and Albano
