In search of loving fathers

The grin on 21-year-old Sasha Fisher’s face tells the beautiful story of true love.

The love that everybody needs; the love that not everybody gets.

Sasha was a 7-year-old orphan in Russia whose dream came true in 2002. He was adopted by a wonderful couple, and the bond forged between Sasha and his father remains ironclad today. We saw Sasha’s smile in a meeting last week, and we’ve seen that same smile on the little boy in a photo taken as he’s being led down orphanage steps in Saratov, Russia, by his American dad, who’s sporting a similar smile.

While Sasha is embarking on his own life’s journey now in Coeur d’Alene and looks forward to a time when he, too, will celebrate Father’s Day as a dad, legions of children don’t know the joy of loving parents. Statistics vary widely, but UNICEF estimates range from 132 million to 240 million orphaned children worldwide. Orphan Hope International says about a quarter of a million orphaned children are adopted annually, so you see the enormous disparity between supply and demand. Do you also see the opportunity?

If adopting a child is something you’ve ruled out, it doesn’t preclude you from making a huge difference in some child’s life. In a guest opinion published in The Press last month called “Care enough to get attached,” Kevin Harper made a compelling argument for opening your door and your heart to a child needing foster care.

Harper and his wife have been foster and adoptive parents for children from infants to teens for 14 years in two states. He helps recruit, train and mentor new foster parents in Idaho. He bridges one of the most significant gaps with some of the most profound effects in society.

He wrote:

Foster parents may have a child in their home for a week, a month, or sometimes longer if the courts deem it necessary. Regardless of the details of each case, children who are in foster care have just as much need for someone to care about them as any other child — maybe even more so.

While the goal of foster care is always to reunify the child with their family if and when it’s safe and healthy to do so, in the meantime, these kids need someone who cares enough to ask how school was today. They need someone who cares enough to actually listen when they want to tell you all about it. And they need someone who cares enough to be both heartbroken and happy for them if they are able to return safely to family.

Do you care that much? Is there a father out there ready to step up, to put a lasting smile on a face like Sasha’s or provide a loving home temporarily to a child in desperate need? Contact Kevin Harper at [email protected] and make your future Father’s Days better than ever.