-“Spirit and Opportunity”-

Staring out the window of a Russian orphanage into the cold Siberian night, little Sofi dreamed she could fly there…to the starry sky…whose beauty brought comfort and hope…into a place where such things did not exist…

How could she have known that her dreams would partially come true seven years later when Sofi,now in school and now living in the United States with her adoptive family was chosen by NASA to have the Mars Rovers named after her choice…”Spirit and Opportunity”

There are many millions of little “Sofi’s” living out there in the world…whose dreams will simply fade with time, never to be realized, never to even be given a chance. Which of those 150 million little children dreams of being president of their country? Which of them dreams of being a firefighter that will one day save the life of a little child? Which of them dreams of being a scientist that will cure AIDS or cancer? Which of them simply dreams of someday being a mother and loving and caring for a little child of her own?

There is a sad element to Sofi’s story in that she is one of only a few thousand each year out of the many millions of orphans that will be taken into a loving home. Most will stay right where they are…in the orphanages, on the streets and in the jungles…each with their own fading dreams and lost hope.

As this year fades into the next, hundreds of millions of people will celebrate the New Year’s coming…but for the lost and abandoned orphan children of the world…the tick of the clock at midnight, signaling a new year…will slip by unnoticed and uncelebrated.

As those who know their plight, we face a collective and unprecedented challenge lying before us…to step up and take responsibility where none is being taken and give the many millions of suffering orphans out there in our world a chance…the same chance we were given and that every child deserves.

Sofi now has new dreams…that one day she will travel into space as an astronaut and there amongst the stars, perhaps she will meet up with the dreams she had of old…back in the orphanage. Maybe she will even land on Mars and see the Rovers that she named… because now, anything is possible.

We have the ability to make the dreams of millions of other orphans come true as well…and who knows which one of them, staring up at the sky tonight, just might change the world…for like Sofi, they already have the spirit…they just need the opportunity.