Zeno Group Blog

As Alex Miller recently blogged, some members of the Zeno LA team helped out with the Alliance for Children’s Rights National Adoption Day this past Saturday in downtown Los Angeles. This was my second year participating in the event, and the two could not have been more different.

In 2007, I worked with Jessica Vitale to make Adoption Day a success – 200 children received permanent families, community involvement was at a high, and the media turnout was more than we could have hoped for. We secured broadcast and print hits, including coverage on the local FOX, ABC, Telemundo and NBC affiliates, as well as the LA Times. The Alliance was thrilled with the resulting coverage, which helped bring awareness to event and all the groups that made Adoption Day possible.

For this year’s event, we had all the makings of a successful day – again, more than 200 Los Angeles-area children would join their new families permanently, actresses Lucy Liu and Nia Vardolos were going to assist with the adoptions, Nia was going to make a special announcement regarding her own recent adoption success story at the press conference (she had not yet announced that she and her husband Ian Gomez had successfully adopted a little girl in the previous months), actor Willie Garson was in attendance for the second year in a row and multiple families were adopting siblings of those who had been adopted on previous Adoption Days.

Our successful media day was quickly foiled by an outbreak of wildfires in Riverside, Orange and Los Angeles counties on Thursday, November 13. On the day prior to the event, we warned The Alliance that these fires could be problematic in getting media to the event, but that we should still have a decent turnout. Saturday morning would prove differently. Overnight, hurricane force wind gusts had spread the fires to numerous counties, and major freeways such as the 405 were closed in surrounding areas. Obviously, the broadcast and print crews, already limited in number due to the weekend staffing, would be covering these major developments. Media follow up on the day of the event brought bad news – no one would be covering anything but the fires, and they would not run b-roll footage of the event.

The Alliance was already dealing with multiple families who were put hours behind schedule due to the road closures and fires, and had to adjust the schedule of events to accommodate those families already in attendance. While The Alliance was understanding of the media situation, it was still disappointing for everyone involved – National Adoption Day is such a great event and brings awareness to the foster care systems in Los Angeles and across the nation.

While the fires disrupted a number of adoptions scheduled for the day, and lowered our expected media attendance, it was still a success in the eyes of everyone involved. We prepared the Alliance for the possibility that we wouldn’t get any media – and when this turned out to be the situation – it wasn’t a huge surprise to them – likely making it easier to accept.

I am already looking forward to the 10th annual National Adoption Day next year – a decade of successful adoptions in Los Angeles is certainly something to celebrate! Let’s just hope Mother Nature doesn’t throw another kink into our plans.