CAW & Nos Buscamos
“A new milestone in collaboration”
Since last year April, CAW and Nos Buscamos, two organisations based and founded in Chile, decided to start their first steps towards a collaboration. Both our organisations have common goals; to reunite adoptees with their biological parents in Chile.
Things have proven to work out extremely well and productive on all possible levels. After our first Family Reunion in San Bernardo became a fact, we soon automatically moved on to the next new family reunion in Puente Alto, Santiago.
Read more about Family Reunions in the following articles:
In October 2019, Constanza del Rio, founder of the NGO “Nos Buscamos”, came to Europe. The goal of this trip was to create awareness within the Chilean Embassies throughout Europe about the illegal adoptions and its challenges that comes with it. To acknowledge and informing the embassies about the organizations that exists today and the right of Chilean Adoptees to obtain their Chilean passport based upon their double identity.
Read more about:
As soon as it was confirmed that Constanza was coming to Europe we started to put an agenda together. Time was limited and many goals needed to be achieved. She and her team first flew to Sweden and Denmark and started the important communications with the Chilean embassies in those countries. Alongside all of this, Nos Buscamos offered adoptees help and guidance on how to start their family search and arranging first hand contacts with families in Chile and continues to do so.
As part of the agenda, Nos Buscamos come to the Netherlands and Belgium. Together with the co-founders of Chilean adoptees Worldwide, Maria Angelica Stodart and Saartje Jessica Verhoest, they embarked on a mini Europe trip within a timespan of 48 hours.
First stop was the Chilean Embassy in The Hague and thereafter a meeting with The HCCH (The Hague Convention) to make them very much aware of the problems about our double identity which is a direct effect of our irregular inter-country adoptions.
After a small break and time to reflect, the journey took us to Brussels in Belgium. Together as two organizations we connected and helped a Chilean adoptee that only speaks french. This meeting was special because it was the first time ever this adoptee had met another Chilean person, and on top of that, three Chilean adoptees with three very different histories living in three different countries today. As a team we were able to inform her about everything she wanted and needed to know about the background of her adoption.
The complexity of being adopted is always the language barrier (which should never be a barrier) and therefore we soon realized how much we need each other’s experiences and language skills.
The following day, the journey took us to “Steunpunt Adoptie”, a Belgium Governmental Organization that helps adoptees, no matter their country of origin, to find their roots. Since Adoptie Steunpunt did not have much knowledge about the Chilean illegal adoptions they reached out to us and we as CAW invited Nos Buscamos to participate in this meeting. It became a very important meeting to demonstrate our connections and network we have back home in Chile. Nos Buscamos was able inform about their connections and collaborations they have with the various governmental bodies in Chile. We will continue to work with Adoptie Steunpunt from now on.
Read more about Steunpunt Adoptie
- Website of Steunpunt Adoptie (Dutch)
On the way to our next meeting we had to add an unplanned stop as we received a confirmation from Chile that the biological sister of an adoptee living in France had finally connected. It was great to share this experience together as a team. Thereafter we continued our journey to the Chilean embassy in Brussels where more constructive talks were held.
Our common goals need a lot of coordination. We are very much aware of emotions that come with being adopted and on a daily base we see the physiological challenges that adoptions can inflict. Therefor we invite anyone who is Adopted from Chile or feels connected to them, to unite and join the cause. We have seen that it can work very healing to be reunited with your birth family. However, this is also where new challenges start.
“If you want to go fast, go alone.
If you want to go far, go together”
The CAW-Team
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