We gather at conferences and seminars because want to learn, because we care, and because we want to be part of the solution.  Each of our stories and experiences are unique which is why we must work together, weaving together these differences to make the fabric of our outcomes stronger.

Because I grew up in foster care, sometimes people point to me and say that I am one of the success stories, but to me, "survival" is not success.  Yes, it is better to have spent almost 10 years in a lifeboat than to have drowned, but my foster care lifeboat had some serious holes that left me constantly trying to keep the water from pulling me under.

Today, more than ever, Bolivian institutes are overcrowded. According to official estimates, more than 19.000 Bolivian children are abandoned.

There are very few alternatives to institutes: foster care is practically non-existent, national adoption is still at the very beginning and international adoption is in a stall phase. All the efforts to give back the children their right to be sons and daughters turned into a privilege bestowed to a small number of them. The biggest part of those children is doomed to grow up between the walls of orphanages, without a proper assistance to help them satisfy and properly develop their affective, biological and social needs.