Word: tam
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...whom the world would know as Pax Thien Jolie was brought to the Tam Binh orphanage when he was one month old after being abandoned by his mother at Tu Du obstretics hospital in Ho Chi Minh City. "His mother gave birth and left immediately," said Nguyen Van Trung, director of orphanage. Hospital authorities put up notices and tried to search for the mother for 30 days but no one showed up. So he was placed in the orphanage, which was provided with a police report of attempts to find his birth parents, as is standard practice in Vietnam...
...happened, according to Trung, when the actress Angelina Jolie applied to Vietnam through an agency asking for a healthy boy between ages 3 and 5, Pax happened to be the only one at Tam Binh orphanage who met the criteria. There were 31 other boys the same age, but all of them had relatives or were not "healthy." "Only Sang met the set criteria for adoption in general and her request," Trung said. "She was lucky at the time she applied that there was this boy who met the request and criteria." (Vietnam's national adoption director says that...
...past years, we have received so many applications for adoptions but few children really meet with the requirements," Tam Binh's director Trung continues. "In so many cases, they are not totally or really abandoned - they still have parents out there and sometimes even other family who come to visit them. For example, the mother may have been sent to jail or is in a mental institution, or the parents may have leprosy - so we cannot let them go." Some of the children also have physical or mental handicaps that make them harder to place. In the end, only about...
...Vietnam's rules of adoption call for Jolie to send the orphanage regular reports and photos of Pax's progress. "For Sang's case," says Trung, Tam Binh's director, "she is required to send a report every six months updating us about his health, mental development, hobbies - and a photo," says Trung. "It's required for the first three years. After three years, it's not required because we can see if the kids are being taken care of for the first three years so we can be assured they are in the good home...
...first things you notice when you walk into the Tam Binh orphanage's reception area is a shrine on the back wall with a large, gold-colored bust of Ho Chi Minh, communist Vietnam's founding father, with a golden hammer-and-sickle hung on the wall behind him. But in a corner across from Uncle Ho's bust, there is a more discreet homage: a photo-copy of a Vietnamese magazine spread featuring Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt taped to the wall next to one of the office's three wooden desks. The article features photos from the couple...