The facilitator will probably be your largest cost in the entire adoption process. Your adoption advisor can assist you in locating a facilitator to use OR you can go online and search for facilitators. So what exactly do you get in return for your money?

Here is what the facilitator should do...

• Translation of Dossier - many pages of families personal documents.

• Trips to different ministries to obtain stamps on translations. This takes hours at a time as every Ukrainian who needs something stamped goes to the same window in one big line.

• Visit to Adoption Center to pick up paper work and check on approval.

• Phone calls back and forth with families in states.

• Meeting families at airport, transporting to hotel, transporting them around Kiev.

• Meeting with Adoption Center and family.

• Accompanying family on train, accompanying family in region, finding suitable accommodations.

• Attending meetings with families at the orphanage. Translating all new documents on children.

• Various visits to local notaries for documents to be submitted to court.

• Getting final approval from the Adoption Center to adopt the particular child before the court date.

• Translating the paperwork so that proper petition can be filed with the court.

• Reviewing court file and making sure that all necessary papers are contained therein.

• Attending court hearing.

• Translating court decree into English (and possibly Ukrainian if in a Russian speaking region)

• Get notaries on translated court decree.

• Go to village of child's birth for amended birth certificate. With the roads the way they are in Ukraine this can take up to a full day.

• Obtain new travel passport.

• Travel back to Kiev with family and get final notarizations of translations of child's file into English.

• Prepare documents for families meeting at the U.S. embassy in Kiev.

• Attend required doctor's visit.

• Transport family around Kiev while they make their travel arrangements and final arrangements to leave Kiev.

• Transport family to the airport.

Of course, this is just a bare bones description of what a facilitator should do. The important thing in understanding all of this is that the facilitator is involved with the families from the time their dossier is ready for translation.

Once the families arrive in Kiev the facilitators assist in the adoption which takes from 2-5 weeks.

The duties of a facilitator are very time consuming and require considerable preparation to accomplish. I can't speak for all facilitators, but our facilitator was with us 24 hours a day in the region. Our facilitator felt very protective of his families and even helped do the shopping while we were in the region.

Of the money a family pays, much of it goes to costs: accommodations, train rides, notaries, drivers, etc.

Honestly, it is not merely a week of "facilitating." I think that the more people understand about the actual process the less mysterious and worrisome it will be. Again, I don't intend to speak for facilitators I don't know, but the ones I know dedicate themselves to the families and as a result they sacrifice so much time with their loved ones.

Since a large portion of the facilitators fees go to expenses, I don't begrudge them the rest for the stressful and time consuming work that they do. Again, I am speaking for the facilitators I know.

-- Ann