Brazil’s first app of its kind, A.dot turns five with 133 adoptions

Brazil’s first app for the adoption of children and adolescents turns five. The anniversary is celebrated at a ceremony in the plenary of the Paraná State Court of Justice (TJPR), bringing together founders, professionals, volunteers and judicial authorities. The A.dot launch date, May 25, is also National Adoption Day. There is an internet broadcast so that the A.dot network, today in nine states, can take part. Watch in full (in Portuguese).

President of the Paraná State Judicial Adoption Commission (Ceja) and founder of A.dot, substitute appellate judge Sérgio Kreuz is the first to speak. He says that “A.dot is a project that involves not only the public authorities, as is the case of the Court of Justice, but also civil society. Indeed, as Article 227 prescribes, it is the duty of the family, of society and of the State to ensure the child’s right to have, to live, to grow up in a family environment.”

He explains that “only those children, those adolescents who would no longer have any chance of adoption through traditional channels go to the app. That is, they are already there because in the national, state, local registry they found no prospective parents. So these are extremely difficult adoptions, which would normally not happen.”

And he celebrates that “845 children and adolescents have gone through the app in this period [of five years], many of them, in particular, with disabilities. We have a figure for confirmed adoptions: 133 made through this app.”

Poor among the poor

Kreuz moves the listeners by stating that Paraná has more than four thousand children waiting for adoption, “who anxiously seek a family.” He adds: “I always say that the child in the shelter is the poor among the poor. Because this child has lost. She has lost friends, lost relatives, even lost father and mother. So it is up to us, as a society, as a State, to make every effort.”

The presentation by journalist and A.dot creator Adriana Milczevsky begins with: “I want to tell you that if you hear any noise during my speech, it is my heart.” She comments on the relationship between professional editorial production and A.dot. “We are many communicators within the group, and Dr. Sérgio believed, as we do, that communication is a tool for transformation. Through the app, more than one hundred lives have become sons and daughters.”

TJPR vice president

TJPR vice president, appellate judge Joeci Machado Camargo, proposes this reflection: “we all believe we can bring a little happiness, that we can bring a little of our work. But not our bureaucratic work [...], but of our heart. We see children here who, one way or another, are sheltered. And when we leave here and look at the street? We will find homeless children.”