Giving It Back to Kids

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 Giving it Back to Kids founder, Robert Kalatschan, and his wife Dorothea were unable to have children. In their desire to start a family, they began investigating fertility treatments and meeting with doctors. However, at the time, the cost for in vitro treatment was about $40,000 – with no guarantees.

They had just enough money for either in vitro treatment or adoption and decided to pray about the decision. In the meantime, they were invited to a charity event where they won the grand prize of two weeks in Costa Del Sol, Spain with round trip airfare. They decided to extend their trip by two more weeks and visit Italy and more of Spain.

On their return, they stayed two nights in London. At the hotel, Robert picked up the first English newspaper he had seen in a month with a headline that showed their fertility doctor had been arrested. Looking at the newspaper, Robert turned it around, showed Dorothea, and said, “Here’s our answer. I guess we’ll be going down the adoption road.”

After three years of meeting prospective birth parents, there had still been no movement in their adoption process. Late one night, they learned about a young birth mother who had decided to give up her eleven-day old baby. They met her the next day, and she agreed to let them adopt their son.

Their son was an exemplary child, and not long after, they yearned for a second child. They once again began the adoption journey. Lawyers had been looking for two and a half years with no movement. Just over two months before her birthday, Dorothea said, “If it doesn’t happen by my birthday, I will give up on another adoption.”

Five days later a phone number was put on her desk by a coworker who had adopted a child from Vietnam. She called the contact and learned that he had not only adopted a child from Vietnam, but also served on the board of an organization that facilitated adoptions.

The next thing they knew, they were getting off the plane in Saigon. On the first day of their trip, they met their daughter at a government-run orphanage with about 270 children – Go Vap Orphanage. They stayed in Vietnam for about two weeks and ended up visiting other orphanages and schools for children with special needs in that time. They flew home, and returned two weeks later when their daughter was ready to be released to them.

Upon returning to the U.S., they were haunted by the faces of the other children they had met in Vietnam. As Robert held his daughter and told her she had won the lottery going to a family and country where she would have every opportunity, he thought of the children he had left behind. Wondering, “What was their future? Surely, they won't have the opportunities my daughter would have.”

Robert said to Dorothea, “Honey, I think we’re supposed to do something in Vietnam.” That “something” became Giving it Back to Kids which has now been making a difference in Southeast Asia for more than twenty years.