Terry Meeuwsen, director of Orphan's Promise, spends time with Dima and others at an orphanage in Petrivtzi, Ukraine.

WASHINGTON, D.C.  – November marks the start of the holiday shopping season but it is most known for the fourth Thursday of the month, Thanksgiving.

November also marks National Adoption Month.

President Gerald Ford proclaimed National Adoption Week in 1976 and in 1990 the observance was changed to encompass the entire month. The celebration usually includes National Adoption Day with courthouses throughout the nation participating and hundreds of adoptions being finalized simultaneously.

National Adoption Month is also a time to celebrate family and to bring forth awareness concerning hundreds of thousands of children in foster homes and orphanages around the world awaiting adoption.

House of Blessing in Thailand provides housing, food, medical care and more to children like Gonika and Chatraporn, above.

Adoption advocacy is one of several areas of focus for OBI's Orphan's Promise, a program committed to helping orphans and vulnerable children.

Orphan's Promise programs span across the world, touching lives from Africa to Ukraine, Asia to Latin America, and right here in the United States.

For example, vegetable tunnels in South Africa are helping provide food for more than 800 orphans as well as producing a surplus that can be sold in the local market. Adopt-a-student programs in Asia offer educational and nutritional assistance to impoverished children, while medical supplies and ongoing anti-parasite programs in Latin America are keeping children healthy and well.

In Ukraine, a country with more than 100,000 orphans, Orphan's Promise-supported orphanages and orphan training centers are also making an impact.

"I didn't have any place to live," said 9-year-old Dima who spent his winter nights sleeping on hot water pipes trying to stay warm. "I had to look for food in trash cans."

The Ukrainian boy was taken in at an Orphan's Promise-sponsored orphanage and nurtured back to health.

"We can't just leave the children out there with no hope," said Terry Meeuwsen, director of Orphan's Promise. "If we focus on what's before us, we can all do something to make a difference."

HOW YOU CAN HELP: Operation Blessing is helping to transform the futures of children like these by providing clean water, education assistance, nutritional feeding programs, medical care and more. Please make an online contribution toward OBI's Orphan's Promise today and help us continue to reach those in need.