Something you should go. Something you should know is brought to you by Genesisgoldra dot com. That is also something you should know. You can put your retirement plan on the gold standard. Genesis Gold Group is the only IRA backed by physical gold and silver. Learn more and get a free gold and Silver guide right now at Genesis gooldra dot com. Excited to visit with not one but two amazing guests today, I have Austin on Colleen with
all about you and this is an adoption organization. Colleen, you started this in two thousand and.
Six, Yes I did. It's a nonprofit organization that serves families wanting to adopt, birth parents who are choosing adoption for their child, and then of course the adopted child.
And by doing this you get to meet a bunch of amazing people. And one of those amazing people is sitting next to you right now. Austin. And Austin, you went through this process, you and your wife did. How long ago did you start the process?
So we started January first, twenty twenty three, and we went through AU with Colleen to do our home study and we got put on their list and we were matched with a child in March of twenty twenty four.
Very nice, and now you have how many kiddos do you have all together?
It was our first one, your first one, Yeah.
But I can tell from that smile it's probably not gonna be last, isn't.
No. I we got to get through the survival stage here. There you go, move on.
I'm so excited. And the thing that's neat I saw this as somebody shared it online. I saw the story of what you guys had gone through and then you started a Sunshine Scholarship, and I just thought, what a neat thing. So tell me what is a Sunshine Scholarship? And how can people who are listening still contribute and help with this?
So I came up with this ID and I proposed it to calling about creating an adoption grant program for like the prospective families or couples that want to adopt. But also there's a financial commitment to do an adoption right, And so what I wanted to do was create an adoption grant fun for families of South Dakota to be able to just alleviate a little bit of the burden that comes with being able to have a family.
I love that, And Colleen, this has got to be kind of a neat thing for you, because again, you started all about you in two thousand and six and you had a chance to work now with a bunch of people. But to maybe have the opportunity to open the doors for some people who might not be able to do it, that's just a really neat thing, isn't it.
It really is. And to see Austin and his wife and their family be so excited and ready to take on this challenge has been very rewarding for us.
Yeah, and we talked a little bit ahead of time because I was asking where are the clients that you work with? And mainly South Dakota, but also in Nebraska and North Dakota, but mainly South Dakota. So probably a lot of people in this area right around here.
Yes, we do have a lot of families in the Stux Falls area, a lot of birth parents in the Stux Falls area.
If somebody listening is maybe because there's two different sides of an adoption. There are people that are saying, we want to have children, but we're not able to have children for whatever the reason, and we're looking at adoption as the solution. But there's also people on the other side of that, where they're looking at adoption as a solution to give their child a loving family. Do you have more people on one side of that equation than the other. Is that kind of equal right now?
Well, typically there are more families that want to adopt a child than there are birth parents that are choosing adoption for their child. So it's not so much numbers situation as a match. Austin mentioned the word match, and what that looks like is when a woman who has an unexpected pregnancy or a couple who has an unexpected
pregnancy choose adoption, they get a lot of choices. They get to choose the type of family they want, They get to choose how open they want the relationship to be, so they have a lot of options in the process us and so anytime someone is struggling with not knowing what to do, we also provide just counseling services for them so we can help them with decision making. If they come to us, it doesn't mean that they have
to choose adoption. It means that they just want to explore it, and then we help them come around to whatever decision that they want to make. And then when they choose then we provide families for them to look at that are going to meet the same types of expectations. So, for example, an open adoption where you have ongoing contact with the birth parents, we want the adoptive family and the birth parents to be on the same page with that so that it's a healthy relationship long term.
I love that, and sadly, most of the time all we know about adoption is what we see in movies and TV shows, and that's not always the best picture of that isn't no, And it's usually not even kind of really close to what reality is.
It really isn't Adoption is hard. Adoption comes with trauma for everyone, and kind of the spurring reason for the Sunshine Fund and the work that Austin is doing is because families who struggle with infertility look at adoption as an option to grow their family, so they experience a
trauma of not being able to conceive biologically. And then you have individuals who have an unexpected pregnancy and they are trying to figure out what to do and they experience that range of emotions that you can imagine going to making the most selfless decision ever possible and to allow someone else to raise their child. And then third is the child themselves and being separated from their biological
parents at birth is a trauma. And so that's why it's so important that our adoptive families go through all the training and are able to know strategies for bonding and attachment and those types of things. It Austin and his wife went through all those kinds of trainings and they can or he can maybe speak to that.
That's fantastic. And what was that like going through that whole process?
It was actually enlightening a little bit. You know, my perspective adoption, I didn't really have one because I didn't I don't work in it, I don't know anything about it. So going through the trainings at the time was like, man, every parent should go through trainings like this because you learned so much on just the little things and big
picture items. And I think it's a very well put together training plan that AU has nice and I believe in it wholeheartedly, and I just think it prepares a parent or parents for the capability to take on taking care of a child and nice and it's very very rewarding to go through the training, but it also just prepares you in general, Colleen.
If somebody would like to learn more about AAU, how do they find you, guys online? Do you have a website?
We do, it's AA you the letter you adoptions dot org. Okay, and they can also call. We answer our phone twenty four to seven.
So I'll throw a link to that to make it easy to find. And Austin, if somebody would like to learn more about the Sunshine Scholarship or if they'd say, hey, I'd like to contribute to this, how do they do that? What is the process there?
So they can either one email me at my email. I can give that to you. It's just Austin Clays at gmail dot com.
Okay.
We have a link on the AAU website as well to donate. If they want to give a check, I can always do that as well. I can meet them where they're at.
Very nice.
But if they just want to learn more about it or contribute, like you said, they can email me or go on the AU's website and again the.
Website once again, AAU Adoptions dot org.
Very nice and I'm going to throw a link to make it easy to find. Thank you so much, guys, yes, thank you, and again I'll throw that link at Facebook dot com slash Sunny Radio and Facebook dot com slash suit Falls News.
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