[Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents Volume 29, Number 47 (Monday, November 29, 1993)]
[Pages 2462-2463]
[Online from the Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]

<R04>
Proclamation 6629--National Adoption Week, 1993 and 1994

 November 24, 1993

By the President of the United States

of America

A Proclamation

    Our Nation's families are the guardians and first teachers of our 
most valuable resource and our primary responsibility--our children. 
Unfortunately, too many children do not have the opportunity to live and 
flourish in a family of their own. They have been orphaned, abandoned, 
neglected, or abused. They have been denied the protection and nurturing 
that a loving family environment can best provide. Now is the time to 
break the grip of the great crisis of the spirit that has far too long 
held our Nation. Now we can begin to bring about a change. There is much 
for each of us to contribute.
    During National Adoption Week, it is vitally important for all of us 
to recognize the joys adoption can bring to the lives of children who 
are in need. For children who have been deprived of belonging to a 
secure, lov- 

[[Page 2463]]

ing, and permanent home, an adoptive family can provide the most 
important ingredient in a child's life--love.
    This Thanksgiving week, families across America will gather to give 
thanks to God for the blessings we all enjoy as individuals and as a 
Nation. Children who have no permanent families, who are waiting to be 
adopted, may not have as much to be thankful for this year. At this 
happy time of family celebration, we must not forget the children for 
whom the affection of a family remains only a dream.
    These children have so much to offer. They deserve our best efforts 
to remove the public and private barriers to their adoption into 
permanent, loving families. We must reach out to the many Americans who 
long for children to love, and we must find homes for the thousands of 
children who are waiting for adoptive parents to take them into their 
lives and into their hearts. And we must also acknowledge the unselfish 
sacrifice made by many birth parents to ensure a better life for their 
child.
    Every effort should be made to inform the public and prospective 
parents that there are many thousands of children available for 
adoption. We must involve the media, private and public agencies, 
adoptive parents, advocacy groups, civic and church groups, and 
businesses. We must ask them to provide publicity and information to 
heighten community awareness of the crucial needs of these children and 
of all those who work tirelessly to place them in loving families.
    Now, Therefore, I, William J. Clinton, President of the United 
States of America, by virtue of the authority vested in me by the 
Constitution and laws of the United States, do hereby proclaim the week 
of November 21, 1993, and the week of November 20, 1994, as National 
Adoption Week. I call upon all Americans to observe these weeks with 
appropriate programs, activities, and ceremonies.
    In Witness Whereof, I have hereunto set my hand this twenty-fourth 
day of November, in the year of our Lord nineteen hundred and ninety-
three, and of the Independence of the United States of America the two 
hundred and eighteenth.
                                            William J. Clinton

[Filed with the Office of the Federal Register, 10:35 a.m., November 26, 
1993]

Note: This proclamation was published in the Federal Register on 
November 29.