Bio: Sharon Slater

On Sharon Slater's first trip to Africa in 2001 she witnessed firsthand and was touched by the plight of millions of orphans throughout the continent and by the disintegration of the family as a result of the AIDS pandemic. Since that time, she has dedicated herself to helping orphans and vulnerable children around the world.

The United Nations has been the site of much of Sharon's work. There she has worked closely with UN Ambassadors and delegates from Algeria, Benin, Costa Rica, Egypt, Kenya, Latvia, Poland, Mexico, Pakistan, Qatar, Slovakia, Morocco, and the United States on a wide range of family issues including HIV/AIDS prevention and international adoption policies. She has met with a number of world leaders, including the King of Swaziland, the President of Mozambique, the First Lady of Uganda, and many high level government officials throughout Africa and in the United States.

Sharon has participated in numerous UN and international conferences including Beijing + 5, the World Summit on Sustainable Development, and the World Summit for Children, where she helped organize the Child Advocacy Caucus.

Sharon directed the development and implementation of the highly successful and widely acclaimed abstinence-based Stay Alive HIV/AIDS prevention education program in Mozambique, South Africa, Uganda, Kenya, Ethiopia, Swaziland and Zambia.

In 2002, she co-chaired the first International Conference on Family-Based Care for Orphans in Nairobi, Kenya. In 2006, Sharon organized and co-chaired the Best Interest of the Child Seminar, an intercultural exchange between government officials from the United States and Mozambique on orphan issues and adoption.

As part of the program for this conference she directed and produced the documentary "The Best Interest of the Child" which tells the heartwarming stories of four U.S. families who have adopted children from foreign countries. The documentary was created to showcase the positive outcomes to be expected for foreign children adopted into American families. It also helps to dispel the common misconceptions and misunderstandings about cultural differences and foreign adoption that sometimes prevent governments from establishing international adoption programs.

At the request of the government of Mozambique, Sharon also directed and is producing a documentary on orphans which the government will used as part of a project to encourage families in their country to adopt or provide foster care for as many of Mozambique's 1.4 million orphans as possible. She traveled throughout the country to film street children, orphanages and child-led families to highlight the dire situation of these orphans. Positive examples of Mozambican families who have successfully integrated orphans into their families are also portrayed.

Sharon has had the opportunity to travel to Costa Rica, Panama, Brazil, Nicaragua, Mexico, Peru, Argentina, Guatemala, China/Hong Kong, Thailand, Germany, United Kingdom, Scotland, Belgium, France, Switzerland, Italy, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Israel, Mozambique, Swaziland, South Africa, Uganda, and Kenya. She has broad experience in international affairs and cultures and speaks both Spanish and Portuguese.

Sharon has a Bachelors degree in Family Sciences, and she and her husband, Greg, are the parents of four children and are working to adopt three AIDS orphans from Mozambique.