Global Adoption Services brings substantial expertise and experience to serve your adoption needs. The agency grew out of the humanitarian relief work that Joyce Sterkel began in 1992. She operated a medical exchange / humanitarian relief project with Global Maternal Child Health Association, Inc. in Nizhny Novgorod, Russia. During the two years that she lived and worked in Russia, over two million dollars in humanitarian aid was shipped to Russian maternity and children's hospitals. Dozens of American doctors, nurses and midwives had the opportunity to work and teach in Russian hospitals. This also gave Joyce great insight into the needs of children in the orphanages across Russia.

After seeing the plight of orphaned children, Joyce began facilitating international adoptions. Her travels led her to the far reaches of Siberia, down to the middle Asian republics, and throughout the heartland of Russia. The story was the same--hundreds of thousands of children warehoused in orphanages without the hope of a family of their own. Now Global Adoption Services is doing what it can to solve this problem and give these children loving parents and a home. We have built the infrastructure in Russia and Ukraine to make your international adoption a success. The team members in Russia and Ukraine and the U.S. are all bilingual and the majority are either legally or medically trained. The program also includes medical exchange programs and an on-going humanitarian relief program with the orphanages.