Adoptive Families Magazine: Positive Adoption Language

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Reprinted from OURS Magazine, May/June 1992 www.adoptivefamilies.com
Positive Adoption Language
The way we talk—and the words we choose—say a lot about what we think and value.  When we use
positive adoption language, we say that adoption is a way to build a family just as birth is.  Both are important, but one is not more important than the other. Choose the following positive adoption language instead of the negative talk that helps perpetuate the myth that adoption is second best.  By using positive adoption language, you’ll reflect the true nature of adoption, free of innuendo.

Words not only convey facts, they also evoke feelings.  When a TV movie talks about a “custody battle” between “real parents” and “other parents,” society gets the wrong impression that only birthparents are real parents and that adoptive parents aren’t real parents.  Members of society may also wrongly conclude that all adoptions are “battles.”

Positive adoption language can stop the spread of misconceptions such as these.  By using positive adoption language, we educate others about adoption.  We choose emotionally “correct” words over emotionally-laden words.  We speak and write in positive adoption language with the hopes of impacting others so that this language will someday become the norm.

Positive Language                           Negative Language
Birthparent                                       Real parent
Biological parent                             Natural parent
Birth child                                        Own child
My child Adopted child;                Own child
Born to unmarried parents           Illegitimate
Terminate parental rights             Give up
Make an adoption plan                  Give away
To parent                                          To keep
Waiting child                                   Adoptable child; available child
Biological or birthfather               Real father
Making contact with                      Reunion
Parent                                               Adoptive parent
Intercountry adoption                  Foreign adoption
Adoption triad                                Adoption triangle
Permission to sign a release        Disclosure
Search                                              Track down parents
Child placed for adoption            An unwanted child
Court termination                         Child taken away
Child with special needs              Handicapped child
Child from abroad                         Foreign child
Was adopted                                   Is adopted

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Brillante Mendoza’s “Lola” screens at Tribeca Film Festival on April 22-24 – NYC

Brillante Mendoza’s “Lola” screens at Tribeca Film Festival on April 22-24

Cannes-winning Filipino Director Brillante Mendoza (“Kinatay”, 2009) returns with a powerful drama of struggle and redemption. After premiering in last year’s Venice Film Festival, “Lola” (Tagalog for “Grandmother”) has won major prizes at the Dubai and Miami international fests.

Two elderly matriarchs bear the consequences of a crime involving their grandsons: One is murdered, the other is the suspect. As the intense financial strains of a burial and legal case weigh on both women, they individually traipse around the prisons, funeral homes, and courtrooms of Manila amidst torrents of rain, while simultaneously struggling to maintain their families’ lives in the makeshift shacks built along the city’s rising waterways. Face-to-face with each other, they work together to reach a common, if compromised, resolution.

Capturing the desperate and frantically beautiful texture of the urban Manila landscape, Lola confirms the depth and range of Filipino director Brillante Mendoza’s vision. Anita Linda and Rustica Carpio deliver incisive performances as the two determined leads in writer Linda Casimiro’s penetrating critique of the criminal justice system, its accompanying bureaucracy, and the incomplete quest for justice and reconciliation. (From the program notes of the Tribeca Film Festival.)

Buy tickets now to screenings of “Lola” at the Tribeca Film Festival HERE.

Or visit this URL: http://www.tribecafilm.com/filmguide/lola-film27264.html

Primary Cast: Anita Linda, Rustica Carpio, Tanya Gomez, Jhong Hilario, Ketchup Eusebio
Director: Brillante Mendoza
Screenwriter: Linda Casimiro
Producer: Didier Costet
Editor: Kats Serraon
Director of Photography: Odyssey Flores
Production Designer: Dante Mendoza
Composer: Teresa Barrozo

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Filipinos Demand Apology from Adam Carolla for Racist Comments!

Unfortunately this is not an April Fool’s Day joke. Adam Carolla chose to use very degrading and racist remarks about

Manny Pacqauiao, the Filipino culture and our people. Please view the video and the sign the petition.

———————————————————————————-

Dear Kababayan, Friends, and Allies,

Radio host and comedian Adam Carolla has recently made several
disparaging remarks about Manny Pacquiao and Filipinos. He has
insinuated that Filipinos “pray to chicken bones” and that the
Philippines is nothing but “Manny Pacquiao and sex tours.”

Hear more about his hate here:
(Warning: This is vulgar and may not be suitable for children).
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aOSqFWwdtAE&feature=player_embedded

As a community, we  must stand up again and let it be known that we
will not allow such hateful words to be made about our community.
These messages of hate help to promote the negative stereotypes about
Filipinos and Filipino Americans and we must put an end to it.

Please read and sign the petition at
http://www.petitiononline.com/FilAmAC/petition.html

And please forward this to your colleagues, family, and friends.

Sincerely,

Kevin Nadal, PhD

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Asian American Showcase – Chicago, IL – April 2-15, 2010

The Gene Siskel Film Center and the Foundation for Asian American Independent Media present the 15th edition of Asian American Showcase (April 2-15), Chicago’s only film and arts festival of the Asian-American experience with nine fiction features, eight documentaries, and two shorts programs, plus special events. Highlights include opening night movie The People I’ve Slept With with director Quentin Lee in person; closing night Indian-American movie Raspberry Magic; as well as festival favorite Children of Invention; and powerful documentaries Going Home, Operation Babylift: The Lost Children of Vietnam, and Wo Ai Ni Mommy, which focus on the Asian adoptee experience.

Some films that we thought may interest you from our showcase:

Going Home; Directed by Jason Hoffman

Saturday, April 3, 5:00 pm

Going Home is an intimate record of filmmaker Hoffman’s first trip to Korea for the purpose of meeting the birth mother who gave him up for adoption more than twenty years before. Through his experience he has confronted situations that will alter his identity.

Wo Ai Ni Mommy; Directed by Stephanie Wang-Breal

Saturday, April 10, 3:30 pm

Wo Ai Ni Mommy (which translates to I love you Mommy) follows an adoptee Fang Sui Yong, soon to be known by her American name Faith, in her journey of assimilating into the U.S. culture. While her Long Island family ponders what cultural pitfalls the future may bring.

Operation Babylift: The Lost Children of Vietnam; Directed by Tammy Nguyen Lee

Sunday, April 11, 3:15 pm

Operation Babylift brought 2500 Vietnamese infants to the U.S. for adoption in the final days of the Vietnam War. Now in there thirties they describe their experience of alienation and discrimination and their search for their family and culture of birth.

To find out more about the festival, visit http://www.siskelfilmcenter.org/aashowcase2010

Tickets are $10/general admission, $7/students, $5/members. Tickets are available at the Film Center Box Office. Hours: 5pm-9pm Monday-Friday, 2pm-9pm Saturdays, 2pm-6pm Sunday. Tickets can also be purchased through Ticketmaster by calling 800-982-2787, visiting www.ticketmaster.com, or visiting any Ticketmaster outlet

The Gene Siskel Film Center is located at 164 N. State Street. Our phone number is 312-846-2600. For more information, visit our website: www.siskelfilmcenter.org or call our movie hotline at 312-846-2800

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St. Louis Beacon – Lost and found: Jim Zimmerly returned to Vietnam with adoptive family to meet his biological one

Lost and found: Jim Zimmerly returned to Vietnam with adoptive family to meet his biological one

By Kristen Hare, Beacon staff

Video by Kristen Hare Posted 10:24 a.m. Fri., 03.12.10 – They met outside Ho Chi Minh City airport. He was exhausted, unprepared and unsure, but Jim Zimmerly stood there surrounded by a crowd of people, in the arms of his crying mother. His biological mother. The woman who adopted him at 1, who raised him and loved him and put him through school stood nearby. She cried, too. Thirty-two years before, their lives all intersected when Zimmerly’s biological mother in Vietnam gave him up for adoption and a family in St. Louis signed up to adopt a child from a country still in tatters from war. Close to 3,000 children were adopted into families in the United States during the time, with thousands more in Europe, Canada and Australia. Zimmerly was one of those children. read more Lost and found: 35 years later, Vietnamese adoptees still try to grasp place in world Lost and found: Dan Bischoff’s journey for answers took him around the world, but clarified little But it was 2007 now, and Saigon was Ho Chi Minh City, and Zimmerly wasn’t a baby, but a 32-year-old back in Vietnam for the first time. His birth mother was small, fragile, it seemed, her hair cut short. She cried throughout the day and touched him all she could, his face, his back, as they sat at her small home around the coffee table eating plates of rice and shrimp and fish, sweating and sipping bottled water, as he met his younger brother, two younger sisters and their families. During that trip, he probably spent a total of 10 hours with his biological family. “I wish there was more, but it seemed like more than enough,” he says now, seated at a Starbucks in St. Peters. “What do you talk about, you know? We just sat there. You go into it thinking you’re going to have all these questions, like, who my father was.” But once he met her, Zimmerly couldn’t ask those questions. “I didn’t know what to do.” He points to a photo of him and his biological brother, who have the same smile. His brother was born just 10 months later, and Zimmerly thinks, that could have been me, I could have stayed in Vietnam, he could have been adopted. It’s something he’s thought about a lot — chance. Like how easily he might have been among half of the passengers who didn’t survive the C5 Galaxy crash 35 years ago during the first flight of Operation Babylift. Or how easily he could have ended up with a family who mistreated him. “It’s fate and destiny and a lot of luck, obviously, to survive a plane crash,” he says. But chance hasn’t shaped everything in his life. Family has. ST. LOUIS, 1970s In Vietnam, Zimmerly couldn’t ask questions about his past. But in St. Louis, they always came easily. They started as a child and often included this one: Why did you and dad decide to adopt the child of a stranger from another country? “I’ve always known that story,” he says. “And I always remember it.” screening What: “Operation Babylift: The Lost Children of Vietnam” When: 7 p.m., Mon., March 15 Where: Anheuser-Busch Hall, law school at Washington University. What else: Panel discussion afterward about intercountry adoption and cultural identity, including Sister Susan McDonald and adoptees Dan Bischoff and Jim Zimmerly. RSVPs are required. Click here for more info. In the 1970s, Wanda and Mel Zimmerly sat on the beach one Sunday, having a picnic during a two-week visit with her brother in California. There, playing in the sand, was a little girl from Korea. She’d been adopted, they found out. “Wouldn’t that be nice if we could do something like that?” Wanda Zimmerly said to her husband then. They talked about it again on the trip home to St. Louis. About a year later, she saw an article in the newspaper about adoptions and how to help the children of Vietnam. She got more information and applied. The Zimmerlys, who worked through Friends for Children of Vietnam, had a home study and got on a waiting list. Then, they waited. a new home Photos provided by Jim Zimmerly In February 1975, when the Zimmerlys’ daughter and son were 10 and 8, the family got a photo of a little boy. He was about a year old and weighed 13 pounds. They assumed his mother was dead. They had 10 days to decide if they wanted him. They did. They’d name him Jim. One morning that April, Mel Zimmerly left for work like he always did. A little after 6:30 that morning, the home phone rang. Wanda Zimmerly answered. “Wanda, there’s been a plane crash in Vietnam,” a friend said. She knew they were trying to get the kids out of Vietnam, but she didn’t know if the little boy they adopted was on the plane that crashed. Later that afternoon she saw the news on TV. The C5 Galaxy carrying Americans and orphans crashed several minutes after takeoff. Nearly half of those on board had died, including children. Wanda Zimmerly was devastated. A few days later, a social worker in Colorado called her and said, “I think we found Jimmy.” Wanda Zimmerly arranged for a friend to bring the little boy from Colorado once the paper work was cleared. He arrived on a Saturday night, the day before his first birthday. His new sister, Melissa, was 10 when Jim arrived. She remembers he was tiny and couldn’t walk, how he loved ice cream and never fussed. Three years later, a letter arrived from Friends for All Children in Colorado. “In April of 1975, a plane evacuating 228 of our children from Viet Nam crashed. Seventy eight of the children and six staff were killed. One hundred and fifty children survived. Your child was one of the surviving children.” ST. LOUIS/WASHINGTON D.C. 1978-1981 For several years, the Zimmerly family traveled to Washington, D.C., regularly, like other families in the lawsuits against Lockheed and the government for the crash of the C5 Galaxy. a new family Jim is held by his sister, Melissa, as his brother, Melvin, stands by. During those trials, it came out that the rear doors of the cargo plane had blown off after takeoff, as they’d done 17 times before. There was no oxygen, and children passed out as the plane crashed. That loss of oxygen caused some of the children to suffer minimal brain damage. Jim Zimmerly saw doctors, was strapped down for a cat scan and visited an empty courtroom. To him, it was a big vacation. He started bragging to friends about how many times he’d been to D.C. The first trial ended in mistrial, and a second trial proceeded, where the Zimmerlys were included in a class action suit. That trial ended in a settlement and the Zimmerlys returned to St. Louis, but Operation Babylift remained an important part of their lives. ST. LOUIS, 1980-2005 Nearly every summer through the end of high school, many of the Operation Babylift families vacationed together. They went to Colorado, Cape Cod, Wild Dunes, S.C., Oregon, Disneyland and even St. Louis. They stayed in their own rented houses or hotels, but gathered together for meals and activities. Friends with a common bond Jim is the first person on the right in a vacation photo with other Operation Babylift families. Though all the kids lived in different parts of the country, Jim Zimmerly grew to think of them as a family. Among them were an understanding and a connection that didn’t require explaining or a map. It was easy. Zimmerly always knew he was adopted, he’d heard the story again and again. And though his father’s side of the family were traditional German immigrants who saw black, white and Asian with clear differences, Zimmerly’s father wouldn’t allow that kind of thinking in his own home. As a child, if Zimmerly cracked a joke about not really being his son, his father got angry. “He would almost hit me, saying ‘I am your father. Don’t say that.’” The signals weren’t always so clear in other places though. Zimmerly, who went to Country Day School, was often asked where he was from. Vietnam, he’d say. Oh, the war, kids replied. Which side are you on? He had no idea what they meant. During his teen years, Zimmerly distanced himself from Operation Babylift. He had his adoptee friends, but didn’t want to know the details of the crash or the war or anything to do with Vietnam. In 2005, a 30-year reunion changed that. The group, organized by Sister Mary Nelle Gage, one of the nuns at the Vietnamese orphanages, met in Estes Park, Colo. Twenty-six of the adoptees came, including the crowd Zimmerly had grown up with. By then, most of them were 30 and had already been back to Vietnam. (Story continues below the photo of the 30-year reunion) At one point during the long weekend was a group session to talk about how people were doing. “It was awful,” Zimmerly says. “I mean, it was awesome, but it was awful at the same time.” He heard a lot of pain, a struggle for identity and issues with adoptive families. And he thought, that could have been me. Zimmerly decided to return to Vietnam, to see it for himself, and soon, his mother had located two brothers and a sister who were also adopted in the United States. Through them, she found out that his birth mother was still living. In 2007, with the mother who raised him and his sister, the Zimmerlys went over to meet is birth mother. ST. LOUIS, 2010 In 2009, Jim Zimmerly and Wanda Zimmerly returned to Vietnam for a second time. He saw his birth mother again, but a stroke she’d had 10 years before was causing her health to decline. That same year, at 34, he was diagnosed with heart disease. Shortly after that, he had heart surgery. “I dodged a bullet twice,” he says. he ‘knows who he is’ Jim Zimmerly, easy going and quick to laugh, has always been that way. But after his heart surgery, it takes even more to get him rattled. Still, it happens. People say stupid things all the time, like how he looks like that guy from “Entourage” or “Mad TV.” They’re small things, like the comments growing up. But they continue. “I think it’s ignorance,” he says, “but sometimes it does get to me.” “The discrimination is what amazed me,” says his sister, Melissa Narez. “I forget that he’s Asian and he doesn’t look like me.” Jim Zimmerly knows that he and the other Babylift adoptees didn’t have what kids have now when they’re adopted transracially and internationally. There weren’t any culture camps back then, or books or classes for parents. “I don’t speak Vietnamese; I don’t know much abut the food,” he says. He wishes he did. And though he’s met his biological family, there’s no bond there, not with his biological mother or siblings. He wishes there was. While he doesn’t let it get to him, sometimes, Zimmerly feels like there’s no real place for him. “Here, you’re Vietnamese,” he says. “There, you’re an American.” In the 35 years since Operation Babylift, Sister Susan Carol McDonald has seen how differently adoptees handle their identity. “Well, most of them would say that they grew up and realized they looked different from other people and some didn’t have a problem with this, some did,” says McDonald (right), who cared for orphans in Vietnam from 1973 to 1975. “Many of them were wishing they had lighter color skin, that their eyes were shaped differently, that their hair was curly or blond, wanting to fit in. Most of them had other children teasing them with karate moves or making Chinese eyes or talking in some gobbledygook language. So they knew that they were different.” For some, it wasn’t a big deal. For others, it was. The issues of racial identity might be specific to transracial adoption, but the issue of identity in general isn’t. McDonald thinks many adoptees hesitated in asking more about their past because they didn’t want to hurt their adoptive parents. “Parents would say, oh, he’s an all-American boy, she’s an all-American girl. I think some felt they had to live up to that.” In fact, she says, some rejected their heritage because they didn’t see it in their families. Wanda Zimmerly, who still speaks on a weekly basis with other Babylift families, doesn’t know much about transracial adoption today. But without meaning to, she and the other families helped their children have a place to process their identity every summer. While the reunions ended after high school, in the last few years, many of the adoptees have reconnected online. “Jimmy knows who he is,” his mom says. And he agrees with that. He’s 35, a tax consultant, laid-back, single, living the life. He’s adopted from a place remembered for war, the survivor of a crash that killed half of those on board, the youngest of three, a St. Louis native and a St. Charles transplant. All those things are part of him. His family had a lot to do with his acceptance of that, he says. “They made me belong.” Next year, Jim Zimmerly plans on returning to Vietnam with his mom. While there, they’ll visit his birth mom again. NEXT: Sister Susan Carol McDonald plans a trip back to Vietnam with adoptees for the 35th anniversary of Operation Babylift.

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Filipino Heritage Camp – Registration now OPEN!

Reminder – FHC Registration is now OPEN – March 8-May 15th!

Camp Fees

The program cost for camps is $95 – $125 per person in the family, depending on grade level, with middle and high school being at the higher end due to extra activities at each camp. Lodging fees are in addition to camp program fees. Lodging is available onsite for Fraser, Winter Park, and Estes Park camps – cost is depending on the accommodation package selected. Average cost of lodging is $175 per night for a family of four. Offsite lodging is also available should you choose to make your own reservations. For Denver camps only offsite lodging is available – area hotel rates will be provided upon registration. Deadlines for completed registrations, which are processed on a first come / first served basis, are noted for each camp.

You will receive registration information in the mail approximately 3 weeks prior to the opening of online registration for each camp.

2010 LODGING INFORMATION

For Lodging information at for Filipino Heritage Camp click here.

TRAVELING TO COLORADO FOR HERITAGE CAMP:

ALTITUDE

Whether driving or flying to Colorado from out-of-state, we highly recommend that you arrive a day or two before camp, so your family can acclimate to our higher altitude! If your camp is being held in the mountains, you might enjoy staying in Denver for a couple of nights, which is a bit of an adjustment at 5,280 feet, then going up to the mountains for camp, which will be at about 9,000 feet! You are also welcome to arrange lodging at the camp site either before camp or after camp, but you will have to do that through individual reservations, and not through our group rate.

AIRPORT

The airport you will be flying into for camp is Denver International Airport. It is approximately 30 minutes from central Denver and about 2 1/2 hours from Winter Park and Fraser. It is about 1 1/2 hours from Estes Park. We highly recommend that you fly in one to two days early, so that your family can acclimate to the higher altitude in Colorado before camp begins. Camp will end around noon on the last day. Please schedule your flight that day to allow for the recommended arrival at the airport two hours before flight time.

RENTAL CAR

We highly recommend you rent a car as it will be much easier for you and your family to get back and forth from the airport to camp, and then to get around easier with your family in the location where your camp is held.

Counselors and volunteers:  Please contact the Counselor Coordinator or Directors of camp to arrange possible transportation.

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CNN: Speed skater J.R. Celski overcomes bloody injury to capture bronze

Speed skater J.R. Celski overcomes bloody injury to capture bronze

Vancouver, British Columbia (CNN) — There was no way he should have been on that medal stand. Going into the final turn of Saturday night’s 1,500-meter short-track speed skating final, J.R. Celski was fifth. The South Korean skaters had a firm grasp on the gold, silver and bronze.

And then inexplicably, two of the South Koreans crashed, and the 19-year-old Celski followed teammate Apolo Anton Ohno across the finish line to stunningly finish second and third.

Kind of a miracle, but Celski has overcome much bigger odds.

Five months ago, it would have impossible for someone to think Celski could win a medal, or even be here. He lay on the ice after a full-speed crash at the U.S. Trials, bleeding profusely, his left thigh sliced open by a skate blade. The cut was six inches wide and two inches deep. It would require 60 stitches.

But first he had to remove the blade, which was still stuck in his leg. There was so much blood, he wondered if he was going to skate again. He didn’t know it at the time, but the gash was just an inch from the main artery in his leg. Fortunately, the blade only cut muscle.

“When I was laying on that ice, I was in defeat at first,” he said Sunday. “I thought my whole career was over. But I guess in those moments is where we truly define ourselves.”

At the hospital, Celski asked someone to take a photo of the gash. It is a nasty picture, and while Celski is keen to show it to anyone who will have a look, it is the only time he reflects on the injury.

“After it happened, I knew I needed to get back on my feet, and the way to do that was to not think about it,” he said.

Celski jumped right into rehabilitation under the care of Dr. Eric Heiden, the speed skating legend who is now an orthopedic surgeon, and then Dr. Bill Moreau, the director for sports medicine clinics for the U.S. Olympic Committee.

“There are never any guarantees with an injury like this, but I will say this: Whatever happens to J.R., it will not be because of a lack of effort. He is working so, so hard,” Moreau told freelance writer Joanne C. Gerstner in early November.

By October, Celski was able to throw away his crutches. Though he still couldn’t skate, he stayed motivated by going down to a rink near his place at the training center in Colorado and watching the skaters from a local club.

He finally got back on the ice on November 16, just eight weeks before the Olympics. It was difficult for him, and he was tentative and he skated very slowly, he said.

“I did have flashbacks at first,” he said.

He even fell a few times during training, which was a good thing because it helped his mental recovery. He found a toughness inside, he said, and his family helped immensely. It was as important as his physical rehabilitation.

Before his injury, Celski was the heir apparent to now six-time medallist Ohno. Before his first Olympic race, his first since the crash, he was just a question mark.

Now, with two races, the 1,000 meters on Saturday and the 5,000-meter relay on February 26 remaining, he’s a remarkable comeback story with an unending smile and a most unusual picture on his iPhone.

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Filipino Intercollegiate Network Dialogue: Filipino Students Educating Their Peers

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Viloria.com: Filipino podcast/language lessons

Hi all,

Viloria.com – was started in 2005 by a gentleman in the Philippines. He has been providing useful podcast episodes on his website for folks who would like to learn Filipino words and phrase. They can also be downloaded from iTunes  for free! As a native speaker he offers accurate pronunciation and instruction in the Filipino language. The episodes range from children games, cultural lessons, traditional songs and vignettes from the Philippines.

Here are some sample episodes:

• Episode 26: Plane Landing
• Episode 25: Oh, Waiter!
• Episode 24: Holy Week
• Episode 23: Wedded Bliss
• Episode 22: Baby Village
• Episode 21: Parental Guidance
• Episode 20: Getting Around

Click HERE to access and play the full list of episodes.

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Filipino Heritage Camp – Winter Park Mountain Lodge – July 15-18, 2010

“I Love Camp” FHC 2nd Grader Camper
“ This is my Favorite Camp” FHC 5th Grade Camper
“ I don’t want Camp to end” FHC 7th Grade Camper
“ It’s worth so much to see our girls grow with confidence – giving them the tools to cope with adoption/race issues we don’t fully understand. They look forward to seeing their long lasting friends every year.” FHC Parent
I did not realize how much camp would help me as a Parent too!” FHC Parent

The Filipino Heritage Camp is one of a handful of camps designed especially for families with children adopted from the Philippines/with Filipino heritage. Committed to exploring both the cultural and the adoption aspects of growing as an adoptive family, it is one of ten camps facilitated by the highly respected Colorado Heritage Camps, Inc.

FHC 2010 is going to be a year of big changes! Not only do we have a new facility in Winter Park, it will be the first year in the history of FHC that two Filipino adult adoptees will be Co-Directing! We have big shoes to fill with our predecessors and former Directors Scott Grant and Sue Thiry but are confident that the dedicated parent and Filipino community volunteers will once again be instrumental in providing wonderful programming for the children and parents. FHC is also planning an optional “Family Fun Day” for folks who would like an extra no frills day. Date to be announced so please check site regularly for update.

The Filipino Adoptees Network (FAN) is thrilled to partner with FHC for the 4th year. FAN is a network that supports and provides resources to Filipino adoptees, adoptive families and those touched by adoption. Volunteering as a counselor for FHC is an amazing opportunity to meet fellow Filipino adult adoptees. Click here to apply as an FHC counselor:

This year FAN is proud assist with the development and implementation of the:
• elementary workshops,
• middle school and high school workshops,
• adult workshops,
• and family based programs.

Our new location, Winter Park Mountain Lodge is located
directly across from the Ski Resort, which is full of summer time events and activities, and a stones throw from downtown Winter Park. The Resort recently added 100 new rooms and renovated 52 rooms. Area activities and amenities are endless; we are ecstatic to provide you with a memorable and fun weekend!

Plans for 2010?

” NO history, NO self, KNOW history, KNOW self: Honoring Filipino Americans”

2010 is a U.S. Census year and the Filipino American community is anticipated to become the first largest Asian American group, surpassing the Chinese Americans. The U.S. Census reported in 2007 that 3.1 million Filipinos reside in America and 80% of Filipino Americans are U.S. citizens. Also in 2007, the U.S. Census reported the Filipino American community to be 4 million or 1.5% of the U.S. population.

Who are the Notable Filipino Americans? What have been their contributions?

This year’s Filipino Heritage Camp, you will learn about the rich history of Filipinos in America that date as far back as 1587 to present day. The workshops and activities will focus on prominent Filipino Americans in the various industries such as entertainment, science, education, sports, medicine and arts. There will also be educational and fun workshops that will look at music, art, dance, history and games that celebrate our Filipino American heritage.

The elementary workshops will include sessions on:
• Filipino/American history
• Craft projects
• discovering love of Filipino music, and dance,
• entertainment and games!

There is specialized programming for our middle and high school aged campers, including:
• Learning about our Filipino American history
• “Survivor Philippines”
• Filipinos in the music industry
• Babayin – the ancient Filipino sanskrit
• “More than Me” project, partner organization to be announced. For more on this trademark Colorado Heritage Camps project, click here:

Workshops for Parents will include;
• The popular cooking classes,
• Adoptee panel,
• An overview of the history of Filipinos in America
• Parent run workshops

The Filipino-American Community of Colorado (FACC) will be celebrating their 10th year volunteering with FHC. The members have had an invaluable role with the camp over the years providing a connection to our Filipino culture by teaching us about culture, cuisine, dance, music and history of the Philippines.

To read about last year’s camp click here

For more pictures of Filipino Camp 2008 click here

We look forward to seeing your family at camp!

Volunteers/Counselors:
The support from the local Filipino community from Denver is amazing BUT we are always looking for more volunteers and counselors; to assist with the kids, teach workshops, preparing meals, etc., We encourage Filipino adult adoptees to apply as counselors, which offers a unique opportunity to network with fellow adoptees. Please consider joining us this year as a volunteer or counselor!
Donations:
As a non-profit 501 C(3) organization, Filipino Heritage Camp is always seeking financial assistance to help keep camp costs reasonable for families, and still provide an outstanding program. If you’d like to help, please go to the Donations section of this web site. Thank you very much in advance.
Frequent Flier Donations:
We are also in need of donations of frequent flier miles to help defray costs of out of state speakers. If you have miles you can donate please email us at info@heritagecamps.org
We hope to see you at camp this summer. For further information, please contact us. Filipino.H.Camp@gmail.com

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