Welcome

Hello all!

My name is Anni Zheng, an Honors in Nursing student at University of Alabama at Birmingham. A main part of the Honors curriculum is to partner with a community agency to implement a service learning project. My project is about International adoption, especially the families that adopted children from China, which is also my home country.

 My partner agency is Villa Hope Adoption. We are currently generating a brief introduction of Common Medical Conditions Identified among Children Available for Adoption in China, hoping that the prospective parents will have a better understanding about what to expect before they make the decision to adopt. The material will be put on Villa Hope website, and a hard copy will be given to adoptive families.

The other part of my project is to help the Chinese adoptees maintain Chinese culture. Many families adopted a child from China want their children to maintain Chinese culture. I think the best way is through local Chinese families. I am trying to match adoptive families with local Chinese families as “Friendship Partners”. They can regularly visit each other, or hang out together, so the children will have more opportunities to experience Chinese culture. I’m learning a lot in this project, and more to expect.