Photo credit: Erica Adams
Emmy Award-Winning Actress Katherine Heigl, Singer-songwriter Josh Kelley (shown above), Grammy Award-Winning R&B Artist Ne-Yo celebrated The Congressional Coalition on Adoption Institute’s Angels in Adoption™ at The Ronald Reagan Building & International Trade Center.
U.S. Senator Mary L. Landrieu, D-La
U.S. Senator Mary L. Landrieu, D-La., Co-Chair of both the Congressional Coalition on Adoption and the Senate Caucus on Foster Youth, joined the Institute (CCAI) in recognizing the stars as well as Steven Curtis Chapman, and PEOPLE Magazine for their work on behalf of children in need.
When asked what were the happiest and saddest moments in working with Angels in Adoption, Senator Landrieu replied: “I absolutely cannot pick the happiest moments because I have literally have had thousands of them, that’s how inspirational these events are.
The saddest moment was when I was in a conference one day when I heard a young girl who was probably in her young twenties stand up and tell the audience, of which I was a member, that she was so hungry sometimes (and she grew up in The United States).
She was homeless for a good part of her life and lived in an automobile with her mother. She was often so hungry that she would just put salt on a loose leaf paper and try to eat it to calm the hunger pains in her stomach and I am sitting there as a United States Senator listening to this and thinking I know that we have homelessness, I have worked on it my whole life; but to hear a child from her perspective speak about the failure of the system to catch her, to identify her, to know that she desperately needed help is overwhelmingly sad to me.”
Grammy Award-Winning R&B Artist Ne-Yo
Former professional football player and current Sports Director at NBC 10 in Philadelphia Vai S. Sikahema hosted the evening gala.
