Every year, 15.000 orphans are adopted in Russia. But around 31% of end up returning to orphanages because they can’t integrate into their new families. One of the most frequent causes is the lack of resemblance to their adoptive parents, which often leads to feelings of exclusion and loneliness. So, looking similar to their parents is more than just a natural wish for orphans, it’s also a positive influence in their adaptation. At the same time, there are potential adoptive parents that would feel more comfortable to adopt a child who looks like them, wich in many cases can be instrumental for their decision.

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So we created a project to connect potential adoptive parents and orphans already connected by nature: The Twin Souls. We integrated the Russian national database of orphans in a website with face recognition technology so that potential parents could upload their image or turn on the camera on their devices to scan their faces and connect them to children with a similar resemblance. The project was the most successful project ever for adoption awareness in Russia and helped to increase the number of adoption requests by 500%.