Jenny Bowen, now 66, was 50 years old when she decided to adopt a little girl in 1997. She was working as a filmmaker with her husband, Dick Bowen, but all of that changed when they found their new passion and careers — adoption in China. After winning the prestigious Purpose Prize award in 2011, it’s no surprise Jenny is nominated again in 2012.

It was a New York Times article that opened their eyes to the horrible conditions for young girls in China. They were being discriminated against based solely on their gender. The Bowen’s decided they were going to adopt a beautiful little 2-year-old girl who was sick. After only a year with them, she was happy and restored to health.

Now, Jenny is the founder of the Half the Sky foundation. The name of the foundation comes from a Chinese saying, “Woman hold up half the sky.” By 2000, the first installment of her foundation was up and running, and that same year Jenny adopted a second chinese daughter.

Her mission was to “figure out how to let the Chinese government let us come over there and help children.” Jenny said on The Today Show on Feb. 14, “We bring love to children who don’t have families,” Jenny said. She also discussed the progress speed of the girls: “Within six months, children were being children.”

Well, it looks like her mission was completed because in 2011 the Chinese government announced its commitment to make Half the Sky’s programs available to every orphaned child in China. Jenny is in charge of over 2,000 children care workers and has 51 centers with one located in each provence in China.

With all of her hard work, it’s no wonder Jenny is up for the 2012 Purpose Award! We bet she will take it home again!

-Jeannie Van Allen

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Zahara was just six months old when the couple found her in an orphanage in the Ethiopian capital Addis Ababa in 2005.

Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie were so shocked by the squalor Zahara was living in, they immediately knew adopting would save her from a certain death!

“I have seen children suffer far beyond what we experience in America – like our oldest daughter,” Brad tells Parade magazine.

Zahara, now 6, is Brad and Angelina’s eldest daughter. They have also adopted 10-year-old Maddox, from Cambodia and Pax, 7, from Vietman. Their biological children are Shiloh, 5, and three-year-old twins Knox and Vivienne.

Zahara has flourished into a beautiful, healthy girl in the Jolie-Pitts‘ care. But it hasn’t always been that way.

Brad adds, “I know she would not be alive (if she had not been adopted). I know what care was available to her, and it was nil. I cannot imagine life without her.”

How terrifying. Thank God they found her!

Do stories like this tempt you to consider adoption, HollyMoms?

– Ian Garland

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The singer admitted last year that she wants to adopt one day, because she’s scared of childbirth — now sources say she’s started making arrangements!

Rihanna is in the process of adopting a child from earthquake ravaged Haiti, according to a sensational new report! Do you think she’s ready to be a mom?The 23-year-old is “dead-set on becoming a mom to a child from Haiti, and she’s just had lawyers make contacts,” an insider tells the National Enquirer.

The report seems a little far fetched — surely Rihanna’s far too busy partying to contemplate settling down — but she did discuss adoption, and let slip her maternal side, during an interview last year.

She told Liverpool, England’s Radio City 96.7: “I’m really scared of the actual childbirth situation but I do want to be a mom one day. Even if I have to adopt, I want to be a mom.” But is she ready already? The National Enquirer‘s insider says yes — even claiming parents-to-be Beyonce and Jay-Z are encouraging Rihanna to go ahead and adopt ASAP!

“She’s getting enthusiastic support from mentor Jay-Z and wife Beyonce,” the source reveals, adding she “asked them to be godparents!”

“Rihanna doesn’t see herself having a biological child anytime soon because she doesn’t have a man in her life – plus, after all the drama with Chris Brown, she’s suspicious of guys.”

– Ian Garland

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The super rich society girl turned to a shady agency through desperation, after struggling to adopt a sibling for her 4-year-old daughter through legitimate means.

When she discovered what she was doing was illegal Taylor Stein, the former lover of Estee Lauder boss William Lauder, blew the lid off the scam – leading the FBI to the crooks making a fortune from black market babies.

The agency was charging premium fees for ‘white’, ‘well-bred’ ‘American ‘babies, that were actually created by sperm and egg donors in the Ukraine and carried by impoverished American surrogates.

“Looking back, there are signs I should have seen. But I didn’t, I just didn’t,” Taylor tells the New York Post.

“I was trying to adopt a child in need . . . and it became very, very complicated,” and then an agency popped up.

She handed over an eye-watering $180,000 to Baby Dreams in return for an unwanted surrogate baby.

“My girlfriend had an attorney . . . [who] told me she had a baby who was originally meant to be adopted by another couple. They had employed a surrogate, and the couple just walked away, and would you like the baby?”

“I decided this kid was in need . . . so I went through with it.”

But in September 2009 she was told the surrogate had run away.

It later turned out she had gone to the authorities to tip them off about the agency.

Taylor was promised another unwanted surrogate baby, and went ahead with the adoption process. Two weeks before she was due to pick up her baby, the FBI came calling.

“I got a phone call from the FBI. They were waiting for me outside my house. I was petrified,” she says.

“They told me, ‘We believe you have been the victim of an international fraud’ . . . and they told me they needed my help.”

“I was the ideal person . . . because my baby had not yet been delivered, so I wasn’t one of those parents who was petrified of losing their child.”

“They asked me to make some phone calls, be wired, get information, get as many confessions as possible and bully them into telling the truth, which I did.”

Taylor got enough information to help the FBI pinpoint and pounce on the ringleaders, Hillary Neiman, 32, Theresa Erickson, 43, a prominent surrogacy attorney, and Carla Chambers, 51, a former surrogate.

It turned out the trio were bullying cash-strapped women to become surrogates and flying them to the Ukraine to be implanted with fertilized eggs by anonymous donors – sidestepping strict US laws.

The babies were then born in California, where they weren’t required to put the name of the biological parent on birth certificates.

They had brokered at least twelve ‘adoptions’ by the time they were caught.

Neiman, Erickson and Chambers have pleaded guilty to wire-fraud charges and face sentencing in October.

Taylor meanwhile, ended up adopting the baby she was promised, after contacting the surrogate and ensuring they went through the proper and legal adoption process.

“My son was born in March 2011. His name is Ren Friedrick. He is 5 months old,” she tells the Post.

She now plans to travel to the Ukraine to find Ren’s biological parents, and make a documentary about her quest: “My son has no information about the identity of his real parents, and I think that is a birth right.”

Let’s hope she finds the truth Ren deserves!

– Ian Garland

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Sara was snatched from her teen mom’s arms when she was just a few days old and sold to a wealthy New York couple for $10,000!

It took 34 years for Sara Hudson to find her biological mother Kathleen Rhodes, after she was stolen and sold by greedy rabbi Seymour Fenichal — and they’re now making up for lost time!

Kathleen met rabbi Fenichal when she discovered she was pregnant at age 18. She called a helpline, believing she’d be helped by nuns, only to stumble into an adoption scam.

Fenichel gave Kathleen a place to stay and when she gave birth in 1977, her newborn baby was taken from her arms.

She was raised by a wealthy couple who were desperate for kids. Sara, 34 admits she never felt a part of her adoptive family but didn’t start looking for her real parents until she had a health scare last year.

She finally tracked Kathleen down after posting a message on Facebook and they enjoyed an emotional reunion last week.

A tearful Kathleen, 53, told her daughter, “I have been waiting for you to find me. I’ve always loved you. I’ve always thought about you.”

“I’m sorry it took me so long,” Sara replied.

Rabbi Fenichel’s scam was unearthed in 1988 and he was indicted on 144 counts of selling babies and forcing mothers to “falsify birth certificates and coerced those who wavered into giving up their babies, using emotional and financial intimidation.”

He was charged alongside his daughter and two other women, but they avoided jail after securing a plea deal. He died in 1994, aged 70.

What a terrifying tale, HollyMoms. We’re so happy Sara was reunited with her real mom and pray the other babies stolen by Rabbi Fenichel find their way home!

– Ian Garland

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Viola Davis, 45, who is best known for her amazing performance in the movie Doubt, was thrilled to announce that she and her husband of eight years, Julius Tennon, are adopting a baby domestically very, very soon!

“We don’t have any children [together], but we’re about to adopt a baby,” Julius, who has two children from previous relationships, told E! News at The Help premiere in Beverly Hills Tuesday (Aug. 9).

Viola agreed with her husband, adding, “Yes, we’re about to adopt a baby.” Aww, that’s amazing news!

Viola has wanted a baby and now her dreams are coming true. Congrats again to the happy couple!

–Leigh Blickley

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After a traumatic year of failed IVF attempts and a devastating miscarriage, the TV couple are looking to adoption to make their baby dreams come true.

Although Giuliana Rancic admitted that she and husband Bill “are not actively trying” to conceive a baby, that doesn’t mean they’re not actively trying to adopt one! On Chelsea Lately last night, the Giuliana & Bill stars told Chelsea Handler that they’re looking to adopt an “underprivileged kid” from Giuliana’s hometown of Naples, Italy! Ah, great news!

“That story’s out there,” host Giuliana, 35,told Handler. “We’ve tried everything, we’ve tried IVF, we’ve tried it all, so we’re open to everything,” adding of Naples, “I feel, like, a real connection to where I’m from.”

Last week, Giuliana told USA Today, “[Having a baby is] always in the back of my mind,” but that she and Bill were ready to take a break and “have a year of fun.”

Good for them, we just hope that after a year of heartbreak, a year of fun will lead to their baby dreams coming true!

–Leigh Blickley

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Barack Obama Sr. told immigration officials he would give the future president up to the Salvation Army as soon as he was born!

Kenyan-born Barack Obama Sr. made the statement during an interview to renew his student visa, in 1961, while his 18-year-old wife (Barack Obama’s mom) Ann Dunham was five-months pregnant.

A memo following the interview reads, “Subject got his USC (U.S. citizen) wife ‘Hapai’ (Hawaiian for pregnant) and although they were married they do not live together and Miss Dunham is making arrangements with the Salvation Army to give the baby away.”

Obama Sr, then 24, was being investigated at the time by immigration officials over allegations he lived a ‘playboy’ lifestyle and had a number of wives.

The couple kept their baby, but split soon after. Barack Sr. later returned to Kenya where he died in a car accident, and the President was raised largely by his maternal grandparents in Hawaii.

The report has come to light following a Freedom of Information request from an Obama biographer. It’s not clear if Barack Obama‘s father was serious about the adoption plan, or if he was lying to help his chances of securing a visa extension.

If true, the news won’t be a complete surprise to President Obama — he has spoken in the past about the pressure his mom would have faced to put him up for adoption, at a time when mixed-race marriages were still illegal in 22 states.

He wrote in his memoir Dreams From My Father, “The hostile stares, the whispers, might have driven a woman in my mother’s predicament into a back-alley abortion – or at the very least to a distant convent that could arrange for adoption.”

But the President is convinced his mother would never have gone through an adoption. When asked if Obama had ever looked into the matter, his former press secretary Robert Gibbs insisted the answer was “no” because Obama “is absolutely convinced that she did not.”

The President’s maternal great uncle, Charles Payne, agrees: “I never heard any talk of adoption whatsoever.”

“Ann decided she had done this and this was her child and she was going to take care of him,” he adds. “From day one, as far as I could tell, she and (her parents) Madelyn and Stanley were all completely committed to Barack.”

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