Street Stories: The little ambassador

(WPRI) - A local couple is using t-shirts to help a county that is home to a population of orphans, five times the size of Rhode Island.

The Anderson’s joy erupted when their long, expensive adoption process was finally over. Claire was theirs.

“Who's a silly girl,” Eric Anderson says to Claire on video he recorded last March in Ethiopia when the adoption was final.

Months later, we met with the Andersons in Connecticut. Her new big brothers are watching her closely.

“She's been amazing,” Anderson tells us in this week’s Street Story. “An amazing blessing to our family.”

And she is also potentially a blessing to her country, where it either rains too much, leading to flooding or not enough, leading to drought. The homes are ramshackle on a good day but they are better than the orphanages that are home to 5 million children.

“Give me an example of how bad the conditions are?” I asked him.

“In some of the orphanages,” he tells us. “There is one nanny for every 20 to 30 infants. They'll prop the bottle up and it's up to the infant to keep it there and they don't check on them for 20 to 30 minutes at a time.”

Now, that sad problem is getting a happy idea. Eric, who admits an obsession about making t-shirts, will put what makes you happy, as in ‘your happy, on a t-shirt.

“So, it's your joy,” he tells us as he blazes a camera emblem on a shirt for photographer John Villella. “Where's your passion? What do you get happiness out of?”

For 20 dollars, you get one t-shirt and an orphan in Ethiopia, who may never receive new clothing, gets the other. The money raised will help improve the orphanages. And someday awareness may help streamline the adoption process for children like the little ambassador, Claire, who from the beginning was expected to do big things.

“Her nannies, before we left,” Laura Anderson tells us. “Wrote her notes and they all said we hope you can change your country.”

In a country where 12 year-olds are often put out on the streets to take care of themselves, there is a huge need for change.

Find out more by logging onto myhappyshirts.net