Safe Haven Baby Boxes

Amy Senior, Founder, Adoption For My Child the design and creative force behind the company’s products and services. As an entrepreneur, wife, and mother to biological twin boys and an adopted daughter, Amy has experienced a journey of infertility, birth, disability, loss of children (foster children) and adoption. Adoption For My Child empowers families and expectant moms to take control of their adoption journey, providing them with available adoption situations, instant profiles delivery and freedom to be presented to any expectant mom considering adoption. AFMC is uniquely positioned to operate at the highest standards of care, support and integrity. They remove the barriers by empowering families to take control of their adoption journey. AFMC believes in Your Choice, Your Voice and Your Plan.

Our guest, Daniel Nehrbass, is the President of Nightlight Christian Adoptions, home of the Snowflakes® Embryo Adoption program. Dan will address various adoption program the agency has and answer many frequently asked questions. Nightlight Christian Adoptions provide families with many paths to parenthood through their domestic, international and foster adoption programs. In 1997, they pioneered the world’s first embryo adoption program, Snowflakes®, allowing families to experience pregnancy and give birth to their adopted child. Snowflakes exists to empower couples with remaining embryos to choose LIFE for those embryos by selecting an adopting family. Snowflakes is about HOPE. By the end of 2022 the program will have helped families give birth to over 950 babies. The Snowflakes program has been helping with embryo donation and embryo adoption since 1997. It is the oldest and most experienced embryo adoption agency in the world. The Snowflake Embryo Adoption Program is Uniquely Child Centered : Over 800 babies have been born to their adoptive parents through successful Snowflakes placements. Nearly 1,600 families have donated their remaining embryos through Snowflakes (sometimes referred to as leftover embryos or unused embryos)– allowing them to choose the family for their embryo gift. Embryo adoption is a low-cost adoption option, allowing you to experience pregnancy and give birth to your adopted child. There are now over 1,000,000 embryos in frozen storage in the United States.

Our guest will be Diane Ferraro, CEO of Save the Storks. Diane will share her own story as being adopted at birth, becoming an adoptive mom herself, and the mission, work and successes of Save the Storks. This is a don't miss episode.

May is National Foster Care Month and what better way to celebrate than with the Dave Thomas Foundation. Their mission is: Dramatically increase the number of adoptions of children waiting in North America's foster care systems. The Dave Thomas Foundation for Adoption is the only public nonprofit charity in the United States that is focused exclusively on foster care adoption. Through its signature program, Wendy’s Wonderful Kids®, the Foundation funds adoption professionals, known as recruiters, who are dedicated to finding loving, permanent homes for children waiting in foster care. We will be highlighting the foundation, and speaking with Kameca and her husband, Jamar, who adopted Elias and Niyah through the Dave Thomas Foundation for Adoption’s Wendy’s Wonderful Kids program. The Brooms, who live in Texas, hope that anyone considering foster care adoption see it as a higher calling.

Pat O’Brien is the Executive Director of the Adoptive & Foster Family Coalition of New York, after recently serving for 2.5 years as the Director of the Coalition’s post adoption program called AGAPE in both Long Island and Rockland County. The Coalition unites foster, adoptive and kinship care families, giving them a voice and providing support, information and advocacy. By fostering communication and collaboration between families, agencies and concerned citizens, we seek to ensure the stability, well-being and permanency of all children touched by the child welfare system. The Adoptive and Foster Family Coalition of New York provides support, information and advocacy for foster, kinship and adoptive families and related professionals in New York State. Incorporated in 1975, they provide services to help support families and their children. They educate the public, legislators and government leaders about the needs and realities of foster, kinship and adoptive families. Finally, they collaborate with child welfare agencies and other groups to ensure that families are best able to support and parent the children in their homes.

Safe Haven Baby Boxes mission is to prevent illegal abandonment of newborns by raising awareness, offering a 24-hour hotline for mothers in crisis and offering a last resort option for women. Founder, Monica Kelsey, started Safe Haven Baby Boxes, Inc. after learning she was abandoned as an infant and after seeing a baby box in operation at a church, in Cape Town, South Africa. She has made it her personal mission to educate others on the Safe Haven Law and to do whatever it takes to save the lives of innocent babies from being abandoned. The Safe Haven Baby Box takes the face-to-face interaction out of the surrender and protects the mother from being seen. The Safe Haven Baby Boxes organization's primary goal is to raise awareness of the Safe Haven Law. Women in crisis can call the 24-hour hotline and can receive counseling and assistance. To date, the hotline has received over 8,000 calls from every state in the United States. Safe Haven Baby Boxes has referred over 500 women to crisis pregnancy centers, assisted in 7 adoption referrals, and have had over 100 legal Safe Haven surrenders. 15 babies have been surrendered in one of our baby boxes. Three babies were surrendered to firefighters at Safe Haven Baby Box locations. Since April 2016, when the first box was installed, there have been no dead abandoned infants in the state of Indiana.

The Mother's Heart is a Pregnancy Resource Center for the Northern Neck, VA area. The founders: Jaime Gomes and Ashleigh Dilworth are here to help and love women facing unplanned pregnancies or who have experienced abortion. Are you carrying the emotional baggage from an abortion? Are you currently pregnant? We can help! The idea of The Mother’s Heart of the Northern Neck began 7 years before they started operating in January 2022. It is in its beginning stages of development and fundraising. We will be speaking to the founders on this episode. These are two women had the same idea... just 7 years apart! Their vision is to help men and women who find or have found themselves in an unplanned pregnancy.

In June of 2019, Waskom, Texas made a bold move to outlaw abortion in their city, becoming the first Sanctuary City For the Unborn by ordinance in America. Since the initiative in Waskom many other cities have followed in their footsteps and passed an ordinance outlawing abortion within their city limits. Today's guest, Mark Lee Dickson serves as a Director with Right to Life of East Texas and the founder of the Sanctuary Cities for the Unborn initiative.

Our guest, Melanie Wallace, is a licensed social worker and certified master life coach. She has worked with children and families since 1993 and served in adoption for about 14 years. Her passion is family and serving them how she can. As an Adoption Specialist with New Life Adoption, Melanie does outreach and education to local pregnancy centers in the East and Northeast Texas area. She hopes to bust the myths about adoption, change the way people talk about adoption, and reduce the stigma of adoption through education and stories.

Jennifer Woolley brings a few different perspectives to the table, as someone who has walked through two unplanned pregnancies- the first that ended in abortion and the second being an adoption placement through New Life. She then walked through infertility and now is an adoptive mom to two sons, that she and her husband adopted through New Life! She and her husband have a heart for that ministry because of the impact that they have had on her life. She is also very involved with BraveLove and thankful for the work that they are doing to change the perception of adoption, so that more women might recognize adoption as an option!