In the US, November is adoption month and National Adoption Day is observed annually on the Saturday before Thanksgiving.
This event is focused on raising awareness of children in foster care waiting to be adopted.
In South Africa, 2017 statistics show that the child population is about 20 million children.
Of these, approximately 2.8 million are orphans.
Some of these children live in relatively safe kinship or communal care relationships but experts suggest that more than half (1.8 million) could benefit from adoption either by extended family, or by unrelated families.
The children most in need of adoption are those abandoned by their families. Statistics indicate that there are about 3500 such children that survive abandonment every year.
Of the 1.8 million children in need of adoption, only a tiny fraction find adoptive families.
In 2013, 1669 children were adopted and in 2014, the number dropped to 1448.
In 2016 these numbers once again dropped, to 1165, most of which are step-parent adoptions.
Between 01 April 2017 and 31 March 2018 there were only 1033 national adoption, and 153 intercountry adoption.