{"id":34067,"date":"2025-09-21T00:25:08","date_gmt":"2025-09-21T00:25:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/34067\/"},"modified":"2025-09-21T00:25:08","modified_gmt":"2025-09-21T00:25:08","slug":"im-adopted-founder-alex-gilbert-hosts-tauranga-meet-up-event-for-adoptees","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/34067\/","title":{"rendered":"I\u2019m Adopted founder Alex Gilbert hosts Tauranga meet-up event for adoptees"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201cIt\u2019s about, really, just trying to bring people together who are adopted to talk with each other, share their stories, share their experiences, and have someone else [they] can relate to.\u201d<\/p>\n

Gilbert said he had received feedback from people wanting \u201cface-to-face\u201d interactions.<\/p>\n

Between 20 and 30 people attended the Auckland and Hamilton events, he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s a nice little turnout of people but I know that\u2019s helping so many adopted people who actually don\u2019t know anybody else adopted.\u201d<\/p>\n

Gilbert was adopted by Whang\u0101rei parents<\/a> Janice and Mark Gilbert in 1994 with his adoptee brother, Andrei, from Arkhangelsk orphanage in Russia.<\/p>\n

In 2013 he used social media to track down his mother. At the end of that year, he travelled to Russia to meet his parents<\/a> for the first time.<\/p>\n

He set up I\u2019m Adopted in 2015 as a Facebook page. It became a registered charity in 2020.<\/p>\n

\"AlexAlex Gilbert – founder and director of charity I\u2019m Adopted – is hosting a free, adoptee meet-up in Tauranga on October 19. <\/p>\n

Gilbert created a documentary series called An Adoption Story – an independent project he produces and edits.<\/p>\n

He had so far released 17 episodes on his Facebook page and YouTube channel. He planned to start filming the next episodes in October, including one in Tauranga.<\/p>\n

The next five episodes – telling the stories of three New Zealanders, one Romanian, and one Russian – would be released later this year and next year.<\/p>\n

Gilbert set up a Patreon and YouTube supporter membership to help fund the production.<\/p>\n

Gilbert said he was releasing a \u201cone-off\u201d short documentary called My Kazakhstan Connection about his family links to Kazakhstan.<\/p>\n

He and his partner Justene Musin did the story together in search of his biological grandmother.<\/p>\n

They filmed it in Kazakhstan in 2023 and unsuccessfully tried to submit it to film festivals.<\/p>\n

The 17-minute documentary would be released on September 20 on the I\u2019m Adopted Facebook page and Gilbert\u2019s YouTube channel.<\/p>\n

Tickets for the Tauranga meet-up are available on the Humanitix website. <\/p>\n

The event is free, however, there is a koha (donation) option when registering. <\/p>\n

Megan Wilson<\/a> is a health and general news reporter for the Bay of Plenty Times and Rotorua Daily Post. She has been a journalist since 2021.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u201cIt\u2019s about, really, just trying to bring people together who are adopted to talk with each other, share…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":34068,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[31990,31992,20306,1259,8231,9180,2082,311,3173,25630,31989,31993,9862,31991,4486,111,43,139,1536,69,2122,6182,1227],"class_list":["post-34067","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-zealand","tag-adopted","tag-adoptees","tag-alex","tag-community","tag-event","tag-experiences","tag-for","tag-founder","tag-gilbert","tag-hosts","tag-im","tag-invited","tag-meet","tag-meetup","tag-month","tag-new-zealand","tag-news","tag-newzealand","tag-next","tag-nz","tag-share","tag-stories","tag-tauranga"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34067","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=34067"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34067\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/34068"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=34067"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=34067"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=34067"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}