Armenian Adoption Adventure explores the latest in Adoption news from Armenia. Armenian Adoption Adventure has a network of 40 people worldwide that have adopted from Armenia. God Bless you on this difficult journey.
Saturday, October 8, 2011
Armenian Adoption Adventure- Steve Jobs and his Armenian adoptive parents
Steve Jobs always proud of his Armenian parents
Steve Jobs always fondly referred to his adoptive Armenian parents "as HIS parents" they encouraged his love of technology from an early age.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/shirin-sadeghi/steve-jobs-was-an-arab-am_b_997470.html
Abdul Fattah Jandali, a young Syrian Muslim immigrant in Wisconsin, never met his son Steve Jobs. When a baby was born to the 23-year-old Jandali -- now known as John -- and his 23-year-old German-American girlfriend, Joanne Schieble, in 1955, there was no chance he'd be able to grow up with his biological parents.
Joanne, who belonged to a white, conservative Christian family could not convince her parents to marry an Arab, a Muslim, according to Jandali, who called her father "a tyrant" in a New York Post interview in August 2011. In fact, according to Jandali, she secreted off from Wisconsin to liberal San Francisco to sort out the birth and adoption without letting either him or her parents know.
And so it was that a nameless Arab-American baby was adopted by an Armenian-American family. Clara Hagopian and her husband Paul Jobs had been married around seven years and had not been able to conceive. The little bundle that would be Steve was very much wanted in the Jobs household.
Steve Paul Jobs, as they named him, grew up without ever knowing his biological father. It seems he had no interest in knowing him later in life, either. When, in August 2011, the London tabloid The Sun, contacted Jandali, he publicly reached out to Steve saying, "I live in hope that before it is too late he will reach out to me. Even to have just one coffee with him just once would make me a very happy man."
But Steve never replied. Less than two months later, he has passed away.
Jandali says it was his "Syrian pride" that kept him from reaching out to his famous son. In a September 2011 interview with the Reno Gazette -- Reno, Nevada being the city the 80-year-old Jandali lives and where, having never retired, he is the Vice President of a casino. "The Syrian pride in me does not want him ever to think I am after his fortune. I am not. I have my own money. What I don't have is my son...and that saddens me."
One wonders what Jobs knew of his background.
His biological father was no ordinary Syrian. According to an interview he gave to the Al Hayat newspaper in February 2011, he was born in French-mandated Syria in 1931 in the town of Homs to a "self-made millionaire" father with no university education who owned "several entire villages" and a homemaker, traditional mother. He was one of five children -- the only son of a family with 4 daughters.
He left Syria at 18 to study at the American University in Beirut, where he was "a pan-Arab activist", a "supporter of Arab unity and Arab independence" who organized with some of the most famous activists of his time. After university, he moved to the United States, and the rest is history, though he regrets leaving his homeland.
"If I had the chance to go back in time, I wouldn't leave Syria or Lebanon at all. I would stay in my home country my whole life. I don't say that out of emotion but out of common sense," he told Al Hayat. "Of course I miss the social life and wonderful food [in Syria], but the most important thing is the outstanding cultural attributes which in general you don't find in the West," says the non-practicing Muslim, who nonetheless "believe[s] in Islam in doctrine and culture."
His nostalgia aside, millions worldwide would no doubt disagree with Jandali. Surely a Steve Jobs of Apple Computers could only have been possible in America.
The estrangement of a father and son is made even more tragic by the fact that not only did each know of the other, but they shared more than a father-son biological connection. Jandali and Schieble eventually did marry -- just ten months after she gave their baby boy away to adoption, and just a few months after Joanne's father died. And they had another child -- a daughter with whom Steve eventually had a relationship. Mona Jandali -- now Simpson -- is a world reknowned author who was, in her own words, "very close" to her brother Steve once they established a relationship as adults.
According to Jandali, he had no idea until just a few years ago that the baby his then-girlfriend secretly gave birth to in San Francisco was the man the world knew as Steve Jobs. But Steve must have known for decades, through his relationship with Mona.
In the August New York Post interview, Jandali tried to let his son know that he didn't know of Joanne's San Francisco plans. That he was saddened when he learned of it. "I honestly do not know to this day if Steve is aware of the fact that had it been my choice, I would have loved to have kept him," he said.
And unless Jobs's upcoming November authorized biography addresses the issue, Jandali may never know. Instead, with news of Jobs's death, Jandali has refused any further interviews about his long lost son and will always wonder what could have been. In that, he will not be alone.
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More about Steve Jobs Armenian adoptive parents
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/steve-jobs/8811345/Steve-Jobs-adopted-child-who-never-met-his-biological-father.html
His biological parents met as 23-year-old students at the University of Wisconsin at Madison.
They were unmarried when his biological mother, Joanne Schieble, fell pregnant in 1954.
His biological father, Abdulfattah Jandali, was a Syrian Muslim immigrant who later married Ms Schieble. He has said they did not want to put their baby up for adoption, but his girlfriend’s parents would not initially allow her to marry an Arab.
Under pressure from her parents and fearing scandal, Ms Schieble travelled to San Francisco to have the baby. Steven Paul, as his adoptive parents named him, was born on February 24, 1955.
“Without telling me, Joanne upped and left to move to San Francisco to have the baby without anyone knowing, including me," Mr Jandali, who never met his son, said in August. He described Ms Schieble’s father as a “tyrant”.
His adoptive parents, Paul and Clara Jobs, were Armenian and unable to have children. Steve was later joined in the family by his adopted sister Patti Jobs, born in 1958. The couple divorced in 1962.
Though Steve did not know until much later, Abdulfattah Jandali later married Joanne Schieble and had another child, Mona, in 1957, whom they kept. Steve Jobs discovered he had a biological sister, the successful novelist Mona Simpson, at the age of 27.
In 1997 he described Ms Simpson as “one of my best friends in the world”.
Nevertheless, he was dismissive of his biological parents. ''They were my parents,'' he said, referring to Paul and Clara Jobs.
Paul Jobs was a machinist for a firm that made lasers in what became Silicon Valley, in Northern California. Steve described him as a “genius with his hands” and said the only he wanted to pass on to his own children was “to try to be as good a father to them as my father was to me”.
But he was also estranged from a child he fathered early in life. In 1978, his high school girlfriend, Chris Ann Brennan, had a daughter. Steve denied he was her father for two years, at one point swearing to a court that he was infertile. He eventually acknowledged Lisa Brennan-Jobs was his daughter, however, and she lived with him as a teenager.
Steve met his wife Laurene Powell while speaking at Stanford University. They married in 1991 in a Buddhist ceremony in Yosemite National
Armenian Adoption Adventure- Birthrate crisis in Armenia creates an aging population
http://armenianow.com/social/health/32216/armenia_demographic_crisis
Armenia, the land that some claim to be the world’s oldest is “ageing” in a way that is not good.
Armenia faces threat of demographic crisis, experts in the field say. Only during the first quarter this year as compared to the same period last year the number of births dropped by 1,126 in what specialists fear is only the beginning of the demographic decline which will last a few decades.
Even though there has been a tendency of birth increases registered since 2006, experts foresee a decline again, conditioned by the fact that people who were born in 1990s are this generation’s new parents and their number is quite low – averagely 35,000 people, reaching even up to 22,000 (annually).
“This is a serious threat for national security and economic development [of Armenia]. In some years we will not only fail to secure national security issues, but also economic growth. The country and its economy will no longer be competitive. Parallel to decline in birth rate, migration and rapid ageing will even deepen the demographic problems,” says Garik Hayrapetyan, United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) Assistant Representative.
Currently, the birth index in Armenia is 1.5, that is to say, each woman has only one-two children, whereas, in order of have a positive reproduction of a population this index should be at least 2.1 – three-four child in each family.
Ruben Yeganyan, demographer, president of “Armenian Social-Demographic Initiative” NGO, says that “the reproductive behavior of the population has been changed,” and Armenia-based Armenians have passed from two-three children family model to one-two children family model.
“This is a terrible change, which will be very difficult to recover in the future. Now the government must not only encourage birth of a third and more children, but also even the second one,” Yeganyan says.
UNFPA held a research in 2009 to find out the main reasons of the change in reproductive behavior of the population, the results of which proved troubling.
“It was strange enough that the social or housing problem was not in the first place; there is a problem which is even more worrisome and hard to solve – 44 percent of the population does not see their future in this country [Armenia], and they link no faith to the future of this country,” Hayrapetyan says. “This indicates that we deal with a larger-scale problem. The issue cannot be settled only through lump sum payments or having free of charge child-delivery aid. If the social problem is somehow easy to solve, than the solution of this moral-psychological issue needs more fundamental changes.”
According to Hayrapetyan, the Armenian demographic policy mainly settles daily problems, meanwhile, international experience shows that comprehensive programs are needed to stabilize the demographic situation UNFPA is planning to organize a conference of experts in Armenia to develop such programs.
“A conference with participation of world-known demographer-scientists, who have developed a number of demographic programs, will be held on October 19-21, in Yerevan. Their advice will help up understand which are the most effective ways of solving this problem in countries like Armenia. We have no more time to lose,” Hayrapetyan says.
Within the recent months concerns over migration were voiced from the highest tribunes. In 2009, the Government of Armenia adopted the concept paper on Democratic Policy Strategy; however the programs mentioned in it have remained on paper by now; only one of them is mainly working a “Free delivery aid certificate”, which secures free of charge birthing service for women in labour.
“Of course there are many things left to be done; however, the introduction of ‘Free delivery aid certificate’ has seriously promoted birth rate growth. Now the government patronizes health protection of maternity and childhood. Subsidies, assigned from the State Budget to cover delivery aid have increased by three,” says Ara Babloyan, Chairman of the National Assembly Standing Committee on Health Care, Maternity and Childhood.
Experts, however, do not believe that the rise in birth rate is the result of the implemented programs, considering them to be “short-term solutions.”
In 2009, 44,466 children were born in Armenia - eight percent more than in 2008; in 2010, this index was higher as compared to 2009 by about 3,000 children, whereas this year the index essentially fell (by about 1,000 children), even though the free delivery aid still continues.
“Within those years the birth rate has not risen, because one woman continues to have 1.5 children, however the absolute number of births has risen, which is determined by a very clear fact – the generation of the second half of 1980s entered its reproductive age, and it is well-known that it was a period of demographic boom in Armenia, when 81,000-82,000 children were born [annually]. That is to say, only the number of parents has increased, however, they have only one-two children, and that’s it, the growth will stop again,” Hayrapetyan says.
According to UN predictions, if the current pace continues Armenia’s population will drop by about 20 percent in 2050, totaling 2.3-2.5 million people. According the same source, Azerbaijan’s and Turkey’s populations will increase by about 35 percent.
Tuesday, September 20, 2011
Government plans changes in Armenian Child Adoption Rules
http://www.armeniadiaspora.com/news/5133-government-plans-fresh-changes-in-armenian-child-adoption-rules.html
RFE/RL -- The Armenian government is planning to make fresh and potentially far-reaching changes in its rules and procedures for international adoptions of children from Armenia following an RFE/RL report suggesting that they may still be riddled with corruption. Relevant proposals drawn up by Prime Minister Tigran Sarkisian’s office aim to increase the transparency of the process and reduce the role of obscure local middlemen working for Western adoption agencies. They are also meant to make it easier for Armenian families to adopt or bring up orphans.
An April 2011 report by RFE/RL’s Armenian service (Azatutyun.am) said that U.S. adoption agencies seem to continue to make thousands of dollars in informal payments to Armenian officials dealing with foreign adoptions. In particular, it cited a sample contract signed by one such agency, Hopscotch Adoptions, with Americans wishing to adopt Armenian and Georgian children.
The contract, offered to a potential client in the United States in 2007, explained that almost $5,000 of more than $30,000 charged by Hopscotch for every adoption would be spent on “gifts to foreign service providers and government functionaries performing ministerial tasks as an offer of thanks for prompt service.” It claimed that such gifts are “customary” in Armenia and Georgia and do not violate U.S. law.
“Gifts and gratuities” were also a separate spending category in a sample agreement that was offered by another U.S. agency, Adopt Abroad, at least until last April.
Officials at the Armenian Ministry of Justice as well as anti-corruption campaigners in Yerevan agreed at the time that such payments amount to bribes and are therefore illegal in Armenia.Government sources say Prime Minister Sarkisian took the report very seriously, instructing his senior staff to initiate a major revision of existing adoption rules. They were quick to come up with relevant proposals. Those were submitted in June, along with copies of the Hopscotch contract obtained by RFE/RL, to an inter-agency government commission on adoptions headed by Justice Minister Hrayr Tovmasian.
“The root cause of this problem is a lack of transparency, and we must do something about it,” one senior government official told RFE/RL’s Armenian service (Azatutyun.am).
Under the existing rules, the Armenian Ministry of Labor and Social Issues draws up and keeps a national registry of children available for domestic and foreign adoption. The list is supposed to be accessible to prospective adoptive parents. U.S. -- A screenshot of the website of the Hopscotch Adoptions agency. But according to a department on social affairs at the prime minister’s office, this has not been the case in reality as even government bodies have trouble accessing information about all children listed on the registry, officially called Manuk (Child) Database.
In a written statement to the government, the Ministry of Labor said that the database comprised a total of 171 children (135 them kept in orphanages) as of May 1, 2011. However, the head of a ministry division handling adoptions, Lala Ghazarian, spoke of only about 90 such orphans when she was interviewed by RFE/RL’s Armenian service in April.In its written proposals discussed by Tovmasian’s commission this summer, the government department said that “in some cases” children’s inclusion in the database has been a mere formality that legalized pre-arranged adoptions fraught with “corruption risks.” It said this is especially true for healthy babies, the most in-demand category of orphans.The department suggested that the entire database be posted on the ministry website and made available to anyone considering an adoption from Armenia. Tovmasian is said to have personally backed the idea, which also envisages the creation of a separate electronic database of adoption applicants. The latter would thus be put in direct online contact with relevant Armenian authorities in the initial stages of the adoption process.
Officials say this would narrow down the scope of shady activities of Armenian “facilitators” receiving lump sums from U.S. and other foreign agencies. Hopscotch paid them $10,500 per child at least until 2007, while Adopt Abroad currently charges a “facilitators fee” of as much as $19,000. Whether a part of this money is also spent on “gifts” is anybody’s guess.
None of the Yerevan-based adoption brokers is known to be registered with tax authorities.
Another major proposal from Prime Minister Sarkisian’s staff would increase from three to six months the minimum period of time, after an orphan’s inclusion on the database, during which he or she cannot be eligible for international adoption. This requirement, meant to facilitate domestic adoptions, appears to have been violated in at least two cases in 2007.In one such example, an American couple living near Washington, DC adopted a little Armenian girl through Hopscotch in May 2008. Sonia Vigilante, the adoptive mother, revealed on her blog that the girl was less than one month old when she and her husband were first shown her pictures and offered to adopt her in October 2007.
Vigilante reacted to the RFE/RL report with a litany of abusive e-mails sent to Ara Manoogian, an Armenian-American activist and blogger who privately interviewed her and several other U.S. adoptive parents and shared their experiences in Armenia with an RFE/RL correspondent. Using a fictitious identity, Manoogian posed as a childless man from Texas interested in adopting an Armenian child.
“The girl is mine mine, mine!!!” Vigilante wrote on May 31. “I win, Armenia loses. Hahahahahahahaha!!!” “I don't give a shit what the Armenian crooks think of me anymore,” she said in a subsequent note. Sarkisian aides want to curb foreign adoptions also by reinvigorating a 2004 government program that pays local families to host and raise the orphans until they come of age. The program has had only a limited success, with only 24 children currently placed with foster care providers.
The government launched the child fostering scheme as part of a broader toughening of adoption rules that followed another, June 2003 RFE/RL report that likewise exposed possible corrupt practices. The number of annual foreign adoptions has not changed significantly since then. According to the Ministry of Labor and Social Affairs, 61 Armenian children were adopted by foreigners in 2010.
The ministry informed Justice Minister Tovmasian’s commission in July that it has started drafting amendments to Armenia’s adoption-related laws and regulations. Those amendments have not been submitted to the commission yet.
Whether ministry officials, who have long played a key role in the controversial adoptions, will propose the kind of radical changes that are sought by Sarkisian aides remains to be seen.
Copyright (c) 2011. RFE/RL, Inc. Reprinted with the permission of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, 1201 Connecticut Ave., N.W. Washington DC 20036. Original article: http://bit.ly/pxr5GN
Tuesday, August 23, 2011
Armenian Dance for Armenian children
Our first year performance a SUCCESS! This is for younger children from our school the Hamazkayins Noor Dance Ensemble.
We have dance troupes for older students, please consider an Armenian dance class for your children.
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