Jan 26th, Department of Social Affairs, Ministry of Civil Affairs held some provinces and cities’ advance conference of return visit of the Root-Seeking Tour in Guangzhou. Dou Yupei, vice minister of Ministry of Civil Affairs, Zhang Mingliang, Secretary for Social Affairs, Ministry of Civil Affairs went to the conference and gave speeches. Chen Guangyao, Deputy Director, presided over the conference. Liu Hong, director of Guangdong Civil Affairs department, Chen Guiguang, deputy director of the Guangdong Civil Affairs department, Liu Xiaolei, the deputy director of China Center of Adoption Affairs and president of Bridge of Love Adoption Service, Gan Weiwei, the deputy director of China Center of Adoption Affairs attended the conference. Total 82 people , who are the directors from thirteen provinces and cities’ Civil Affairs departments, are in charge of the work of foreign adoption, Leaders of Provincial Center for Adoption, Secretaries of some cities(districts)’s Bureau of Civil Affairs and presidents of welfare institutions, attended the conference. At the conference, the Bureau of Civil Affairs in Yangzhou, Jiangsu province, the Bureau of Civil Affairs in Fuling，Chongqing province, welfare institutions from Yangzhou, Huanggang, Zhanjiang, Kunming and Nanchang described their experiences. The Meeting is enthusiastic with a tight schedule, and achieved the expected results.
At the meeting, Liu Xiaolei, the president of Bridge of Love Adoption Service, made a statement on carrying out the work of the return visit of the Root-Seeking Tour in recent years, her work experiences and the ideas of the future work. She stated that recent years, the leader of the Ministry of Civil Affairs attached great importance to this issue and it obtained a good beginning and go on smoothly. It has experienced a process of the awareness is raising, the management is continually standardization, the content is constantly enriched and the effectiveness is continuously showing. She accounted, the reasons of the management work of return visit in the past two years has achieved the fairly good results is that, it obtained the attentions from the leaders at all levels, got the cooperation from all levels of the Civil affairs departments and welfare institutions actively, and the strict management and considerate service. What’s more, everyone's understanding of this work has been improving and constantly deepens. That is the premise and basis of our Root-Seeking Tour work.
She pointed out that the reception work of Root-Seeking Tour will appear in a good development trend, show a great potential and broad prospects in the next few years. As the Chinese adopted children grow up gradually, the demand of the adoptive families returning to the roots is emerging. They are eager to go the birthplace of children, to the welfare institutions that they lived before to take a look. As a adopted country, we should meet their needs and aspirations as much as possible. In the next few years, we expect that, each year there are thousands of adopted children will race a Root-Seeking Tour to China. Therefore we should plan ahead, and make good preparations on all aspects.
Finally, she gave five points of suggestions on how to do the further works of the reception of the Root-Seeking Tour:
1. Good publicity and promotion work. Since this activities do not last for a long time, many adoptive families do not familiar with the way to apply the Root-Seeking Tour, and have less knowledge about the local featured activities. So we need to use the Bridge of Love Adoption Service and the orphanage's website to promote the Root-Seeking Tour project plan, the previous experience and results to the adoptive families. Through increased publicity promotion, we want to make the adoptive families understand the situation of the Chinese Root-Seeking Tour as much as possible.
2. Experimental work step by step. On the basis of pilot work in the previous two years, in 2010, we will gradually expand the scope of the experiment in more provinces and cities and we prepare to carry out some large scale activities of Root-Seeking event. For example, we will cooperate with three welfare institutions in Jiangxi to organize a large-scale summer camp activity; we will cooperate with the welfare institutions in Yangzhou, Huanggang, Zhanjiang and Kunming to continue the Root-Seeking tour; and we will plan other activities to cooperate with more welfare institutions. Through the pilot work, we want to carry out the Root-Seeking event in a wider scale.
3. Begin to develop collaborative plan. In order to carry out an organized and planned Root-Seeking Tour, we will contact Bureau of Civil Affairs and welfare institutions to conduct consultations, do the specific plan, jointly formulated a year Root-Seeking Tour program at the beginning of the this year so that to ensure early planning, early preparation, early start.
4. Do the training work seriously. In order to further enhance the professional level of reception work, we plan to organize the relevant person who works for the reception of Root-Seeking Tour to training at an appropriate time this year. What’s more, we are ready to invite related people to join the Root-Seeking Tour program live activities to broaden the horizons and exchange of experiences.
5. Should focus on policy and theoretical research.
Focus on the new situations and problems appeared in the adoptive families’ Root-Seeking Tour in China, under the guidance of the Social Affairs department, Ministry of Civil Affairs, we will carry out investigation and theoretical discussions to solve the various problems of Foreign Adopted children Root-Seeking Tour in China may faced promptly.
