For 120 years now the Gladney Center for Adoption has been building families. With over 28,000 combined domestic and international placements, Gladney has helped shape personal families' stories while helping make our world and nation a better place as a result. Your generous gifts that help women in crisis, educate our youth, and bring children to loving parents also brighten the future for all of us. Domestic adoption is our cornerstone. Over our 122 year history, Gladney has placed more than 28,000 children into permanent families and has worked with over 36,000 birth mothers.

Now a worldwide agency, Gladney's domestic adoption roots remain strong. About 200 birth mothers annually choose either to live on campus or to remain in their communities, relying on Gladney's expert assistance during their pregnancy, delivery and adoption placement. In addition, our New Beginnings domestic adoption program places children for adoption who otherwise will age-out of the Texas foster care system.

We strive for excellence in everything we do. For Gladney, the adoption process is a relationship - a relationship with birth mothers, with adoptive parents and with the children we serve.

Following are six of Gladney's top funding priorities for 2010:

1. Pathways for Adoptive Families, a program to recruit, train and equip stable, loving adoptive parents for the unique challenges of adopting CPS children or international orphans over the age of two.
2. An on-campus maternity home, where programs address each birth mother's physical, nutritional, educational, mental and emotional needs during their pregnancy and for up to six weeks after they place their babies for adoption.
3. Next Steps birth mother program, which is offered throughout pregnancy, provides gifts and talents development, scholarships, job training and placement assistance, housing guidance and self-confidence boosters to support their next steps toward a new life after Gladney.
4. A "Family for Life" relationship is conveyed by Gladney's professional staff to every Gladney family. This includes adoptive issues counseling (from a listening ear to crisis management), parenting and special-needs adoption training, family camps, social events and teen service trips. This commitment is offered at every stage of an adoptive family's journey.
5. Outreach programs that build trusting relationships with crisis pregnancy centers, hospitals and social workers, and that educate teenagers about the option of adoption if an unplanned pregnancy occurs.
6. Humanitarian aid - more substantive each year - to provide assistance and programs that help meet both immediate and long-terms needs of orphans left behind in every foreign region where we operate.

We encourage you to participate in The Gift of Family 2009-2010 campaign by making a donation online. A gift to the campaign not only helps to meet the needs of the Gladney Center for Adoption, but also helps encourage others, such as foundations and corporations, to support Gladney financially. Through your gift, the Gladney Center for Adoption can continue to give The Gift of Family 2009-2010 as it has for over the past 120 years. We encourage you to visit the "How Gifts are Used" area of this Web site to see some of the specific ways your gracious charity has brightened the futures of so many. There are many ways to help us meet our fund raising goal.

For additional information or assistance, please do not hesitate to contact Nonya Jordan, Vice President Development & Events, nonya@gladney.org, or telephone 817-922-6033.

We are truly grateful for your ongoing support in our mission of Funding Bright Futures Through Adoption.