Save the Children

Is it any surprise that organizations such as Save the Children are against Madonna’s plans to adopt Mercy, a four-year-old orphan from Malawi?

According to the Telegraph¹, Mercy has spent the majority of her life in the Home of Hope orphanage in Mchinji, where Madonna, also found her first adoptive child, David Banda.

Nonetheless, Save the Children is against the adoption, saying, “The best place for a child is in his or her family in their home community.”

“Most children in orphanages have one parent still living or have an extended family that can care for them in the absence of their parents,” said the charity’s spokesman, Dominic Nut.

However Mercy has no living parents, so why try to block the adoption? An official at the Ministry of Gender and Child Development said of the latest adoption: “Her name is Mercy James from Mchinji Home of Hope orphanage. She has no father and mother, they both died.”

Save the Children mentions that Mercy may have aunts or uncles, yet so far it seems they aren’t interested enough in her welfare to provide her with a home. Madonna is.

Over the years I have watched dozens of maudlin commercials that paraded indigent children across my television screen, broadcasting that “Maria doesn’t have shoes” and that if I just sign up to “adopt” Maria, I’ll get a picture of her and my monthly contribution will give her the help she needs. Of course, these commercials go on to say that my contribution won’t buy shoes for Maria, but they’ll build a school in her village to give her an education.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not trying to trivialize the plight of these children, but these organizations play on the heartstrings of the good-hearted. The pictures of individual children are just that—pictures. You don’t really adopt a child. You donate money to a charity who uses your gift as it pleases.

The fact is that Maria’s playmates don’t have shoes either. Neither did her mother or grandmother. Going barefoot and hungry is very often a way of life and will be until someone takes an interest in the plight of each individual child. My hat is off to celebrities like Madonna and Angelina Jolie who understand their privileged status and can use their resources to truly save the children.

It’s no big surprise though, that Save the Children and other organizations like it are against the private adoptions of these children. Really taking them out of poverty depletes their picture pool.