Travelling the road to adoption
The little girl is singing her heart out. She is holding a stick, her pretend microphone. The lyrics to her song are barely intelligible, but her captive audience—her mother and father—don’t even notice.
She is Lucy, the light of Rina and Alvi Siongco’s lives.
“She’s not only light,” Rina says. “She’s a spotlight. My God, she’s bigger than life!”
Outgoing, strong-willed, and independent, Lucy has brought joy and chaos into the couple’s lives. To her little sister, Lucy gives infinite kindness.
It’s hard to imagine that only seven years ago, Rina and Alvi had almost given up hope of having a child. But now, they are parents to two children—Lucy, whom they adopted in 2010, and Ari, their biological daughter born two years later.
They are among the handful of parents who completed the legal adoption process. Out of 779 children whom the Department of Social Welfare and Development declared legally available for adoption in 2010, Lucy among them, only 67 were placed in families in the Philippines. [Read the rest of the article here]
*Che delos Reyes is a fellow of the Konrad Adenuaer Stifting taking her Masters in Journalism at the Ateneo de Manila University. She submitted a version of this story as part of the requirements of her Advanced Reporting I course under Prof. Kim Kierans.
