From Adoptive Mum to Advocate: Anna Dombkins on Keeping Families Together

Anna Dombkins and her husband Mark were newlyweds in Wollongong when they decided to become adoptive parents. The process they thought would be simple became anything but, taking them to Tanzania and on to founding an organisation helping prevent babies from needing adoption.

In 2006, Anna and Mark were new parents to their six-month-old son Jackson, when they watched a documentary about orphanages in China that shifted their perspective on adoption entirely.

“It had never even crossed our minds,” Anna told Hope 103.2’s UNDISTRACTED podcast.

“We’d kind of talked about having a big family but we hadn’t really considered adoption as a serious pathway.

“But [the documentary] absolutely broke our hearts.

“Here were these babies that were absolutely neglected. We just knew that we wanted to expand our family by providing a family for children who didn’t have one.”

After years in Australia’s adoption system Anna and Mark were never approved here, one reason being Anna’s unwillingness to give having more biological children.

“We kind of thought it would be a simple process, and it really was not,” Anna said.

“They even suggested I have my tubes tied to show commitment [which] I didn’t want to do.”

That disappointment led them to Tanzania, where Anna and Mark took up work at a local school and went on to adopt three young siblings.

“There was this beautiful set of twins who were nearly one,” Anna said.

The couple were asked if they’d be interested in pursuing their adoption, and then were told there was a third sibling who was severely malnourished also in need of a home.

“So many of them were abandoned not because they were unwanted, but because of poverty.”

“At that time we had Jackson who was now four, and our second daughter Jemima who was also one,” Anna said.

“We’d never spoken about having that many children, so I called Mark and asked what he wanted to do, and he said, ‘We’ve got to give that little guy a chance’.

“We [ended up] coming home with three more one-year-olds [and] I just think God made us ready at that time.”

The experience accentuated the need facing so many children globally, deepening Anna’s desire to do something about helping these babies stay with their mums or find new forever homes.

“We’re standing in this baby home and there’s 50 more babies there and we’re walking out with three,” Anna said.

“It was this weird feeling of, ‘three babies is a lot’, but ‘what about all these other babies’ and ‘this is nothing’.

“So many of them were abandoned not because they were unwanted, but because of poverty.

“[The mother’s] option is watch their baby starve or abandon their baby and hope that it can be cared for.”

Returning home to Australia a few years after the adoption Anna and Mark founded Forever Projects, a not-for-profit enabling income creation for mothers and access to food for babies who would otherwise be separated from their families.

“When you see the barriers there are for a woman to keep her baby they’re extraordinary,” Anna said.

“By ourselves we’ve been able to adopt three children, but in community we now have 3,000 babies who have been able to stay in their homes.”

“By ourselves [Mark and I] have been able to adopt three children, but in community we now have 3,000 babies who have been able to stay in their homes.

“They’re with their family and that’s just such a better way to do it.”

Asked what makes for an ideal adoptive home, if that’s what needed, Anna thinks it’s quite simple.

“What children need is a very ordinary, stable, loving home,” Anna said.

“And lots of us can provide that, so it’s about the willingness and capacity to undertake it.

“We all have something to offer, we just have to ask ‘How can you use that to make meaningful change in the world?’”

Listen to the full episode of UNDISTRACTED with guest Anna Dombkins in the player above or wherever you get your podcasts.