Good morning! I just wanted to give y'all a little update regarding the "non-expiring" accreditation that our agency is trying to obtain in Russia. As I mentioned in a previous post, this process has held up adoptions for some families that work with our agency...other families have been able to proceed right through the adoption process. It all seems to depend on the region -- each of them have different 'policies' on how much they will actually do while the agency is in this sort of transitory stage. I'm trying to obtain info on Vlad's policies -- I will update when/if I find out anything. But for now -- here is a portion of an update I received this morning:

Fri Dec 8, 2006 8:47 am (PST)

(S), Director of the Russia Program, has issued this update: CHI was very hopeful to receive accreditation by the end of November; however, during this interim, they changed the staff with the Federal Ministry of Education and have yet to issue any new requirements for non-expiring accreditation. Today, we heard that during the next two weeks, the Federal Ministry of Education will publish on their website the requirements for the documents for accreditation. As soon as these are published, agencies can submit the documentation. CHI has submitted all documentation which was previously requested and will submit any new requirements as soon as possible. Should everything proceed according to plan, we believe that accreditation will be granted by the end of January, after the Russian holidays.

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So I guess that tells you that things may not move for us till after January...but then again, it all depends. As in most things, time will tell...