What We Do - Our programmes

Sponsorship programme

Interpedia runs sponsorship programs supporting children's education in developing countries. Finnish persons or groups regularly send money through Interpedia to our cooperation partners who run projects caring for children's education and health care and for maintenance of schools and day care centres. Interpedia has about 2 200 Finnish sponsors who support about 4 000 children in Thailand, Nepal, China, Bangladesh, India, Ethiopia and Colombia.

Interpedia also receives grants from the development fund of the Ministry for Foreign Affairs of Finland for some specific projects run by the cooperation partners.

As a part of our development work we offer sponsors and other individuals possibility to volunteer with us, sell fair trade products, participate in development networks and promote global education.

Intercountry adoption

Towards the end of the 70's and in the beginning of the 80's, Interpedia worked to make the Finnish government pass an adoption law, which would also include intercountry adoption. Interpedia also participated in preparing such legislation. The new law took effect in May 1985. Interpedia was authorized by the Finnish government to act as a duly licensed agency in intercountry adoptions the same year. The law got some amendments 1997 to be in accordance with the Hague convention on intercountry adoptions.

Interpedia is authorised by the Finnish Ministry of Social Affairs and Health to deal with intercountry adoptions as an adoption service agency. As an adoption service agency, Interpedia is only authorized to cooperate with an authority or an organisation abroad which has been accepted by the Finnish Adoption Board (section 22 in the Adoption Law). Interpedia has been accepted as a cooperation contact by the authorities in China, Thailand, India, South Africa, Ethiopia and Colombia, countries in which Interpedia cooperates either with the government authority or with an agency authorized by the government. In the last years Interpedia has been able to provide over 100 children per year from the above mentioned countries with loving parents and families in Finland.

Adoption support services include a net of contact persons, preparatory courses for future adoptive parents, courses for families with adopted children and culture group meetings.