Adopting from Krasnodar, Russia

[UPDATE: This post is about 3 years old, yet it continues to generate lots of hits - probably from other parents hoping to adopt from Russia.  However, I must report that we were unable to complete an adoption.  Because we do not live in our country of citizenship, it is almost impossible for us to adopt.  There are very good laws to protect children from child trafficking which also impede our adoption process.  However, feel free to read this post as one of our hopes which has been put on the shelf until our situation changes.]

As we have proceeded on this journey toward adoption, we have experienced some milestone events which are similar to the milestones birth parents experience.


Searching for an adoption agency that would work with us in our unique situation (US citizens living in South Korea) was comparable to trying to get pregnant. This was a long and somewhat depressing process. Sometimes we felt like it was never going to happen.


Finally connecting with an adoption agency and completing the in-house portion of our home study was analogous to actually getting pregnant. This was a joyous occasion for us. This meant that we were actually making real progress toward adoption. This meant we could really begin in earnest. This meant that it was truly possible for us to do this now.

A few weeks ago, we had our third basic milestone. We had a phone conversation with our case manager in South Carolina, with the full-blown Souther accent, and she told us that our child will come from the Krasnodar region of Russia. This feels very similar to when we found out that Emma was a girl. This is our first in depth bit of information about our child. (We had already decided to adopt a boy.) Before I even got off the phone with our case manager, Sarah was already googling Krasnodar - first of all to find out where it is, secondly to look for pictures, and finally, to find out some basic information about that region. The adoption agency we chose - Christian World Adoptions - works in more than 20 regions of Russia, so early in the adoption process they assign parents to a particular region.


Krasnodar is in the far southwest corner of Russia. It is on the Black Sea and borders the nation of Georgia. It is just across the Black Sea from Turkey. (Maybe we can visit our friends Paul and Hoom when we go to pick up our son!) Krasnodar seems to be the name of both a city and the surrounding state or province.

The people seem to be basically European in appearance. This is a picture of a group of kids in an origami class.

Here are some basic demographics of Krasnodar from wikipedia.

• Population: 5,125,221
• Ethnicity
• Russians - 86%
• Armenians - 5%
• Ukrainians - 3%
• Other (30 more listed, all less than 1% each) - 6%

• Population is 53.5% urban.
• Climate: "Mediterranean" or in the south east "subtropical.

Here's some more info from http://www.russiakrasnodar.com/.

• Krasnodar was founded by the Cossacs in 1793 to protect Southern borders of Russia. The original name Ekaterinodar meant 'Catherine's Gift'.
• Krasnodar is the administrative center of Krasnodar Krai, the most populous southern region of Russia.
  
• Krasnodar is situated on the River Kuban, approximately 1000 km (620 miles) south from Moscow, and 120 km (75 miles) north from the Black Sea.
• Today Krasnodar is a dynamic modern city - major industrial, agricultural, and cultural center, one of fastest growing regions of Russia.
• The population of Krasnodar (the city) is about 800,000 people, and it is 18th among the Russia's largest cities.
• Krasnodar Territory is one of the most attractive parts of Russia, with its boundless steppes and high forest-covered mountains. Russia's two southernmost seas, Black Sea and Sea of Azov, wash the foot of the Caucasus Mountains. The mountains are the source of the many rivers that carve their paths through deep gorges and canyons.
• Minerals produced here include oil, fuel gas, salt, hard coking coal, manganese ores, nickel, tin, copper ores, cement marl, volcanic muds, refractory clays, and lithographic stone. There are also huge deposits of construction and road-building materials, such as facing stone, shell rock, limestone, granite, marble, and more.
• The fuel and energy complex accounts for more than 20% of the territory's industrial output. Krasnodar is considered an old oil-producing region of Russia. Oil has been produced there since 1864, and 68 oil fields are operating today.
• With the highest quality soils and a favorable climate Krasnodar region has always been the principal "breadbasket" of the Russian Federation. It has 3% of all ploughed lands in Russia. It also has Russia's only specialized agricultural university. The region produces approximately 6% of meat and dairy products, 10% of all-Russian grain, 30% of fruit production, 60% of oilseed production, 90% of rice production and 97% of wine production.

That's probably enough for today, especially since this isn't nearly as interesting to most of you as it is to us.