Adopting a cause

Sometimes hearing your phone ring can change your life. For prospective adoptive parents, a single ring can mean that their months of waiting and reams of paperwork have resulted in bringing them the joy of their lives. Janice and Mark Bergeron love making those phone calls.

The couple, whose Children At Heart Adoption Service is based out of Mechanicsville, N.Y., resides in Wilmington and maintains offices here as well. After having three of their own biological children, the couple became interested in adopting overseas.

"We found an agency and went to adopt our daughter in Ukraine," Janice Bergeron said. "Once we saw the orphanage and the children there, we knew we had to do something besides just getting one child out of that place. We went back and immediately started working on creating our own licensed agency to do international adoptions."

That was 20 years ago. While Mark worked as a schoolteacher and Janice as an attorney, the couple soon knew that their calling had found them.

"We both ended up quitting and just doing this 24 hours a day," Bergeron said. "Since then, we've placed more than 400 children, mostly from Russia, and now we're facilitating adoptions in Kazakhstan."

The organization's Webs site offers advice on a large number of adoption-related issues. Children At Heart handles around 40 adoptions each year.

Mark Bergeron travels to the countries where the agency is working, fostering relationships with orphanages and local governments. "Mark has traveled to all the countries and set up all the programs," Janice Bergeron said. He's also dressed as Santa and delivered Christmas presents to orphans in Brazil.

But the Bergerons don't stop with helping American families adopt internationally. They also get involved on the local level. Recently, Build-A-Bear donated 500 bears to the organization, and they found themselves in a quandary.

"The teddy bears were donated but it was going to be difficult for us to get them overseas so we decided that they should be a gift to the community," Bergeron said. "We contacted Social Services to see if they could arrange for the bears to go to local foster children."

A little more than a month ago, the group staged an all-day event where local foster parents could bring their foster children by and pick out their own bear.

The Bergeron's daughter and assistant director of the agency, Erica Willock, hopes to not only get interested families started on the road to international adoption, but also to make prospective parents understand the need that exists in their own community.

"We certainly want people to be aware of what we do with regard to international adoptions," Willock said. "But we also want to try and help our local Social Services folks and provide them with some recognition for their efforts. If just one new person decides to become a foster parent or adopt a child, it's worth it."

Currently focusing their efforts on adoptions in Kazakhstan, the Bergerons say that while the process is long, expensive and requires a considerable amount of paperwork, their process strengthens the bond between parent and child.

"You go to the orphanage and interact with the children that are available and you once you've spent time with them you choose your child," Bergeron said. "That's one thing that's unique in our program."

And for those who feel they can't spend the required weeks in the foreign country during the process?

"It's a problem for a lot of people, but somehow they manage to do it," Bergeron said. "The time spent there choosing your child, bonding with them and experiencing their culture, it's so wonderful."