By Olga Bobkova
According to the Co-chair of the Belarusian Union of Women Public Association, Antonina Morova, the main task of this information resource is to make the search easier for families looking for children who are currently living in children’s homes or temporarily with professional foster care families.
Bright colours, original design, a simple menu and the most important thing of all — many beautiful pictures of smiling children. However, behind the visuals lies some serious work. The database is set up so that you can specify a search, while for those who want to take part in the life of children (adoption is not the only form of care) a ‘step by step’ set of instructions is available — where to go, what to do, whom to ask for advice. According to experts, the main difference of the Belarusian DADOMU.BY from similar resources in Ukraine and Russia is that the information about the children is not posted by an operator, who does not know anything about a particular child, but by the boarding workers themselves or other social workers, whose direct jurisdiction are children. The site has no translation into foreign languages, and all calls are made by the authorised representatives of the official guardians.
“It should be noted that the initiative of setting up the portal belongs to the primary organisation, the Belarusian Union of Women of the National Bank of the Republic of Belarus,” noted Ms. Morova. “This non-profit project is an example of successful collaboration of three ministries and public and private entities. The fact that we managed to put it into practice, shows that, together, we can work successfully for the benefit of children. A four-leaf clover, a symbol of good luck, is the site logo. It is hoped, that it is a good sign and that good luck will smile on everyone.”
As Ms. Morova stressed, our common goal is to minimise the number of children’s boarding facilities in the country. Work in this direction is quite successful. Only this year 12.5 thousand children in the country found new families. This new portal is a chance for the rest of them.
The Director of the National Adoption Centre under the Ministry of Education of the Republic of Belarus, Natalia Pospelova, noted, “This site contains information on 3,300 children. The information about 2,200 children was provided by the Ministry of Education. The details of 370 kids presently in orphanages, was given by the Ministry of Health and data about more than 200 children came from the Ministry of Labour and Social Protection. The other children are those who are temporary integrated into foster families, but nevertheless may be adopted.”
In Belarus, the Republican database on children available for adoption has been working since 1997, but the information was provided in the form of paper questionnaires. It was available only to candidates for adoption — people who had already passed the selection process and received the guardianship’s positive opinion of the possibility of adoption. According to Ms. Pospelova, this new resource significantly enhances the ability to care for children, as well as creating additional conditions to ensure openness, transparency of the process, for the children left without parental care.
