Laura Blum, aka Castellano Hernandez, was featured in the Autumn 1999 (Vol.2 Iss. 1 p. 9) of TransCultured Magazine, and is a 24 year old Colombian Adoptee. She will be heading the new efforts to recruit Latino adoptees and their families for Also-Known-As. She and her twin sister were adopted at the age of six weeks from La Casa de La Madre y el Nino. She returned to Bogota, Columbia three years ago and reunited with her birth-family She has since spoken at several adoption conferences, worked as a counselor to birth-mothers at an adoption agency and assisted other adoptees in finding their birth-families in Columbia.

In the last few months since joining our organization, Laura has contacted two large groups/agencies that provide services to families with children from Latin-America: Los Ninos International Adoption Center, based in Woodlands Texas and the Latin American Parents Association (LAPA). Los Ninos is an adoption agency that places children from Latin American countries, and the directors are adoptive parents of twin girls from La Casa in Bogota. Los Ninos offers a broad range of services to prospective adoptive parents and adoptive families.

LAPA is a support organization of adoptive families that assist each other and those looking to adopt from Latin America. They offer a number of services, including guest expert speakers and fun cultural activities for young adoptees. They have support groups in New York, New Jersey and Connecticut. Laura is currently organization a speaking engagement with the New York group.

Laura welcomes any opportunity to speak with adoptees and their families She has created a video of her experiences in Columbia.

In order to develop Latin-American Adoptee programs, Laura and members of Also-Known-As are looking to the international adoptee community to expand the already successful mentorship program to all Latin Adoptees, provide Spanish Language Courses, Spanish cooking courses and other cultural activities. Look out for more Latin American Adoption and Cultural information at this page. If you are interested in finding out more about this new Latin-American initiative, or know someone who might be, contact Laura Blum directly or call (212) 386-9201.

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