by Robert Wiener
NJJN Staff Writer

March 26, 2009

When middle-class families think about orphans, it is often in the context of their own decision to adopt.

But pediatrician Jane Aronson wants to focus attention on the plight of orphans around the world, for which adoption is only a partial remedy.

“My goal is not to have these kids adopted,” she said forcefully, in a phone interview from her office in Maplewood. “Adoption is a small option; it is not the solution.”

Rather, she said, she wants “people to become aware of the unimaginable enormity of the numbers of children orphaned, their issues, and what we can do about them.”

The group she founded 11 years, Worldwide Orphans Foundation, provides residential and medical facilities in three continents, each working to improving the lives of children without families.

The foundation currently maintains facilities in Azerbaijan, Serbia, Ethiopia, Vietnam, and Bulgaria to provide children with medical services — and beyond. Many have lost their mothers and fathers to the scourge of AIDS and are also HIV-positive.

“I am focusing on children who live in institutions abroad and what their lives are like,” said Aronson, who will speak on the topic as Shabbat scholar-in-residence this weekend at Temple Sharey Tefilo-Israel in South Orange. “We can all imagine it’s not a good life. Most of the kids haven’t had prenatal care and are born into abject poverty. They end up in an orphanage setting where there is little attention or care paid to their normal needs.”

Aronson estimates that 145 million of the two billion children in the world live without parents.

“It is important to go deep with orphans and not just say, ‘We’ll save them with some food and we’ll shelter them.’ For me it is about making sure they get the care and attention that any children would require. It is not enough to save their bodies; what is most important is to save their bodies and their souls.”

Normalizing lives

Two programs run by her organization — one in Ethiopia, the other in Vietnam — focus on the medical care of children with HIV.

“We provide them with medication, but the largest piece of the program is social support and education readiness for those kids,” she said.

They attend summer camp, take part in educational activities, and participate in sports and arts programs.

In Ethiopia, the foundation’s Worldwide Orphans Academy has 142 children, some with AIDS, others without the virus.

“It has a real focus on helping the community understand that HIV-infected kids can be healthy,” she said.

Aronson’s bottom-line concern is normalizing the lives of young people who have endured so much pain and so many problems. That can involve solving serious medical problems such as malnourishment, exposure to tuberculosis, parasites, and anemia.

But many orphans also have severe emotional issues and developmental delays that need to be addressed.

“We want to help kids to be able to go to school and compete with other children, go on to higher education, and to be able to get jobs. Our goal is for kids’ lives to be completely transformed so that they are identical to my children living here in the United States,” she said.

Her children are eight-year-old Benjamin, who was born in Vietnam, and 10-year-old Des, a native of Ethiopia. They attend Jefferson School in Maplewood and are studying to become bar mitzva at Sharey Tefilo-Israel.

Aronson said she is eager to pass on her heritage.

“The basic tradition of Judaism is tzedeka,” she said. “It means justice, and my whole life is about justice. It means making sure kids get justice. Justice means getting an education, making sure you have an opportunity to lead a full healthy life. Tzedeka is deeply embedded in everything I do. I feel very strong about the Jewish tradition.”

Comment: comments@njjewishnews.com

--TOP--