This exists because it had to.

Since the 1950s, more than 1.5 million children have been moved across borders through intercountry adoption. Add their immediate loved ones, and that number climbs above 4 million people whose lives have been shaped — beautifully, painfully, and everything in between — by this experience.

For decades, the world focused almost entirely on the beginning of that story: the placement, the paperwork, the homecoming photo.

Nobody built much for what came after.

The Two Gaps We Are Closing

The Travel Barrier

For many adoptees, returning to their birth country isn't a vacation — it's medicine. It's identity. It's the chance to stand on the ground where their story began and finally feel whole.

But homeland travel costs money. And if you don't have it, you're locked out of your own history.

We fund that trip. Because where you come from is a right, not a luxury.

The Support Void

The lifelong journey of processing adoption — identity, grief, belonging, joy, complexity — deserves real, sustained support. But post-adoption services have always been thin, underfunded, and hard to find.

We're changing that. Through direct therapy grants and a curated resource hub, we're making sure support is there when you need it — not just in childhood, but at every stage of life.

The Bottom Line

We don't patch cracks. We build bridges.

The Ties Foundation was created to close the gap between what adoptees deserve and what the system has actually provided. We are lean by design, grantmaking by choice, and fierce by necessity.

This is long overdue. And we're just getting started.