Dear Future President,

In Guangzhou, China, sometime in late March or early April, only a few days after my birthday, I was left in a cardboard box with nothing. After I was found by a police officer, I was taken to an orphanage, and then I ended up staying there for a little over a year. Luckily, for me, I was adopted by a great family and I am very well off now, but so many orphans aren’t as lucky as I was. At the same time that I believe that adoption would be the best option. I also know that not every child gets adopted and they’re the ones who need the most help. In fact, statistics from Sparrow International show that “each year 14,505,000 children grow up as orphans until they age out of the system.”

Bad living conditions can strongly affect how you grow up and how successful you turn out to be. Numerous orphans never get a sufficient education. “1 in 11 children in elementary school age are not in school, that adds up to 59 million worldwide.” Not being given a good education doesn’t properly set them up for life on their own because with little to no education you’ll get a low paying job and you will be easily taken advantage of. You won’t have as many opportunities as you would had you have had a decent education. Also, employers are less likely to hire someone with little to no education, which then increases poverty. This is also the future of America. These are children that have the potential to make a difference in this world and don’t you want them to have a good life and a bright future. I realize that poverty can’t always be fixed, but if they’re orphans then they belong to the government. They’re their responsibility and they should make them a bigger priority. If they belong to you then you should be more inclined to make sure that they’re getting a good education.

I know that back in China, had I stayed there, I would’ve wound up working in a factory after I had gotten kicked out of the orphanage the day I turned eighteen. In the US it’s sixteen, orphanages here are no different than that. Worldwide there are 168 million child orphans that work, these are people that haven’t even aged out. They do this simply because they need enough money so they can buy a little food just to survive. Solely because the government, who are responsible for them, don’t feed them enough. So they have to take matters into their own hands, which I find sickening. If orphans were treated better in the first place this wouldn’t happen. They wouldn’t have to work hours on end just to get enough food to keep them alive.

Most orphans aren’t fed a proper diet, this can lead to malnutrition and starvation. Studies show that there are 62.7 million orphans worldwide who suffer from malnutrition. So “many children scavenge for food in any way that they can just so they will be able to live and that’s not okay.” If the government made it a law where an orphan has to be given food. I realize the many foster parents could easily lie about this, but I believe that there should be a special hotline or service that can report these issues and restrict the foster parents from getting paid by the government. Now, when you become a foster parent you get reimbursed by the government by taking in kids and providing a home for them. However, sometimes foster parents use this extra money to their own advantage and buy what they would consider “necessities”, like drugs and alcohol. While the foster parents drink the day away the orphans are left starving because their food money was turned into drug money. This law would finally make orphans feel like they matter and that someone out there cares about them.

Mr. or Mrs. President of the United States, you have not been making the children of America one of your top priorities and shame on you. Did you know that half of the world’s poverty rate are in fact orphans? To fix this issue you should have a bill that makes every orphanage, foster home, and anywhere else that houses orphans, meet the proper criteria for healthy food, building standards, and a good education. If these orphans belong to the government, don’t you think they would want to help them as much as the government can? They don’t have a support system and on top of that they don’t know how to take care of themselves because they weren’t ever properly how to, because no one ever cared about them. If an orphanage, with no sustaining fruits and vegetables, no hot water for bathing, no education, and nobody that cares about them, is all that those orphans have ever known, how do you expect them to have a good life?

Sincerely,

Rebecca P

http://www.sos-usa.org/our-impact/childrens-statistics

http://www.sparrowintl.org/facts-statistics/