Upcoming Events

May 21-24, 2024

New YoRk

Last week our President, Shaun Kwak, had the pleasure of representing KAIAN at the 2024 Adoptee Leadership Exchange, hosted by @also.known.asinc and @ikaaorg in Manhattan, New York.

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The purpose of this conference was to strengthen leadership capabilities and exchange insights, experiences and ideas to assist sustainability and growth of our peer-to-peer intercountry adoptee communities, that offer a raft of events, projects, advice and services. This was capacity-building at its finest!

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40+ leaders representing organisations based in the US, Canada, Europe and Australia travelled to the big apple to attend, no small feat with 95% of us doing our organisational roles on a purely volunteer basis. Some organisations were recently created, while others are over 30 years old!

It was massively inspiring, informative and fun to spend quality time working with this room of amazing people from around the world.

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Sessions covered over the two days:

• Workshop: What brings us here? What are we proud of? What are we working to shift?

• Helping the Helpers: A conversation on our own mental health

• ​Why you need an Advisory Committee for the present and future of your organization.

• ​Workshop: State of Adoptee Organizations.

• Findings from the MAP Study to Help Adoptee-led Groups.

• ​Resourcing your Organization: Fundraising 101.

• ​Experiences in Adoptee-Led Advocacy.

• ​Workshop: What’s Next... Top common challenges and opportunities.

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While KAIAN is celebrating its 10th anniversary later this year, we have so much to learn from the global community as well as improving what we can offer to the Australian community.​