Organization

History of NCLO

Three weeks after Elizabeth Mallory and her husband John started the preliminary paperwork to adopt two children from Cambodia, the United States government shut down adoptions in Cambodia amid allegations of baby buying and corruption. The Department of Immigration and Naturalization Services (INS) issued an across-the-board moratorium on Cambodian adoptions until they could fully investigate these serious charges. After a few months of being in limbo, not knowing when or if they would ever be able to adopt from Cambodia, the INS compromised and issued a special humanitarian initiative. This initiative would investigate each child that had already been referred to adoptive parents. If the children proved to be legitimate orphans, they would be granted the visas they needed to come to the U.S. Since Elizabeth and John had not been referred their children yet, they were told they would not be included in the humanitarian initiative and would not be able to adopt from Cambodia.

Seeing The Need For The First Time

Undeterred, Elizabeth decided to go to Cambodia anyway and find the children she knew in her heart were meant to be a part of their family. If she did find them, there was no guarantee that she would ever be able to adopt them. This would be her first time traveling outside the United States. Her husband John stayed behind to care for their 4 year old daughter.  

When other prospective adoptive parents heard Elizabeth would be traveling, many asked if she could check in on their referred children who had been waiting in orphanages for months while the INS investigations continued.  Families from all over the country asked if she could bring gifts to the children, take photos and assess their health. Elizabeth happily obliged.

She traveled to 13 orphanages on that first trip and the conditions shocked her. Many of the children were malnourished, sick, uneducated, under stimulated and in much need of individualized care. When she visited the orphanages, she delivered gifts and doled out hugs and kisses to hundreds of children – those who had parents waiting for them, as well as those who did not. Elizabeth also met the boy she knew was to be her son, but she was unable to bring him home because of the moratorium. 

After she returned home to Michigan, she couldn’t think of anything else but going back to Cambodia, not only to her little boy, but to see all the orphaned children. These children had so little; her typical American wants and needs seemed incredibly insignificant. Elizabeth was being pulled back to Cambodia, a country that she wouldn't have been able to locate on a map just one year earlier. Her whirlwind trip gave her a lesson in the country, its people, its history of genocide and the poverty, as well as the hunger and sickness suffered by so many of its children. Current figures estimate that there are anywhere from 60,000 to 200,000 orphans in Cambodia and that 64,000 children under the age of five die every year; mostly from dehydration due to untreated fever and/or diarrhea.

The urge to return to Cambodia was so great that she made a second trip just three months later.

Elizabeth's second trip brought her to 23 orphanages, again laden with toys, clothes and medicine from waiting parents. She visited the little boy and she found the three year old little girl that was to be her daughter. It was also during this trip that she heard the news the Mallory family had hoped for - their case had been reconsidered and since they had identified the children they wished to adopt, the INS had decided to include the Mallorys in the humanitarian initiative. In due time, the little boy and girl would be coming home.

Establishing NCLO

It took an additional 13 months and three more trips to Cambodia before their children were granted visas to join the Mallory family in Michigan. During this time Elizabeth looked to volunteer with other organizations that were doing what she had done – directly helping the children in orphanages throughout the country. Discouraged by not being able to find an organization that promoted what she hoped to accomplish, Elizabeth decided to officially start a 501c3 charitable organization, No Child Left Out (NCLO). NCLO's mission would be to help less fortunate children around the world with a special focus on health, education and love.

NCLO Today

Today NCLO’s work spans across Cambodia and is expanding around the globe. Through donations and backed by a team of volunteers, NCLO has been able to:

• Provide rice and other food to orphanages each month

• Start child sponsorship programs to oversee the health and education of individual children

• Provide educational supplies including everything from school uniforms to bicycles for transportation

• Establish various educational programs including E-Pal, sewing classes, photography clinics, English, and more

• Establish the NCLO Children's Home, a unique facility that serves as a home to orphaned children but unlike orphanages, the children live in close-knit family units

• Establish the NCLO Educational Center that provides a quality multicultural education to children as well as seminars and training to improve the care of children in traditional orphanages 

·     The Future

NCLO’s aim is to attack the problems at the root so that the children can flourish. As NCLO continues to grow, its aim is to aide not just orphans, but any less fortunate children in developing countries throughout the world.  NCLO plans to open more NCLO Centers which will provide homes for orphaned children while reaching into the community to strengthen families and villages in order to prevent children from becoming orphans in the first place.

Please join us in our mission!