Roberts, a Gaithersburg resident, founded Reece’s Rainbow, a nonprofit that helps facilitate international adoptions of children with Down syndrome. The organization is named for Roberts’ 9-year-old son, Reece, who has Down syndrome. Tell me about Reece’s Rainbow.
Children with Down syndrome and other special needs abroad are typically hidden away in orphanages throughout Eastern Europe, Russia, Asia and South America. The moms don’t have prenatal care, and they don’t know that their child has special needs until they’re born. When they’re born that way, they put them in orphanages because they can’t care for them. We raise money as adoption grants because it’s very expensive to adopt internationally, as far as airfare, travel and agency fees.
Why did you start Reece’s Rainbow?
I was volunteering for an organization providing humanitarian aid to orphanages in Ukraine when I found out what happens to kids with special needs. It becomes really personal when you can see the face of your own child in those kids who have been abused, neglected, malnourished and left to die.
Are there other organizations like yours?
The Down Syndrome Association of Greater Cincinnati is a connecting point for birth mothers who want to give their children up and families waiting to adopt children with Down syndrome. And there is a long waiting list — hundreds [of people waiting to adopt] domestically born children with Down syndrome. The prenatal abortion rate of babies with Down syndrome is 90 percent. There aren’t very many babies born with Down syndrome that are even given the chance to be placed for adoption.
Why is there a waiting list?
People with Down syndrome are loving and kind and funny. Probably 60 percent of the families who adopt through Reece’s Rainbow already have a biological child with Down syndrome. Some people adopt one, two, even three more kids with Down syndrome because they’re just amazing.
— Rachel Baye
