Upon application, our Director and staff will review the application to ascertain that you are an appropriate candidate for the Kazakhstan program.

Upon preliminary approval of the application, our office staff will assist you in gathering the necessary documents for the dossier. This begins with the initial packet of information being sent to you and a Consultant being assigned to your family. This person may be in our home office or in a branch office which is near you. Both the branch office and our home office are there to assist you with whatever questions you may encounter in your paperwork search.  We have lists of home study agencies and associate agencies available in each state which we can send to you.

Once the home study is received via our office, final approval is given to the family to adopt from Kazakhstan. Our coordinators and branch office will continue to assist you in gathering the necessary documents for your dossier.

Via our website, www.childrenshopeint.org and www.chifamily.net many of your questions can be answered 24 hours a day from the information provided. We encourage all of our families to take full advantage of the information given on these sites.  We do our best to keep this information current and up-to-date. 

Upon receiving your fully documented papers in our office, we will:

_  Check and arrange the documents and pictures into a proper dossier for presentation.

_  Add several documents to the dossier from our agency which are required by the Kazakhstan 
    government.

_  Contact the family to advise them that their dossier is ready to be sent to Kazakhstan Embassy. 
   The Kazakhstan Embassy then transfers the dossier to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Astana for
   processing, which will check the documents, register your dossier and then will send it to the
   Ministry of Education in Astana for review. Ministry of Education will find a child for the family and
   then forward the dossier to the Department of Education in the region where the child resides.

 The CHI Kazakhstan coordinators will then:

_ Put the matter into process.

_ Identify and correct any possible problems.

_ Work with officials to locate and identify a child for you.

_ Notify you when a child has been approved.

_ Coordinate your travel to the region where you will meet with the Ministry of Education and be
   given official permission to meet your child and obtain information about them. 

_ Coordinate travel and accommodations to and within Kazakhstan.

_ Meet parent(s) at Kazakhstan airport with our bilingual representative, having arranged all
   accommodations, and ground transportation -- as well as all appointments with orphanage officials,
   US Embassy for visa, doctor appointments, etc.