Edmond boy raises money to aid his home country

“I want to help my friends. Some are in the United States, and some are still in Vietnam,” Evans said. Evans and his parents, Kim and Bill Evans, have started a tradition of giving back to the country where Austin was born and lived the first few years of his young life.

Austin Evans has started his own fundraising campaign, “Austin's Change for Children.”

He and his family have come up with several ways to raise money, which will be donated to Dillon International, the humanitarian aid and international adoption agency in Tulsa that facilitated the Evans' adoption of Austin when the boy was almost 4 years old.

Evans and his family will host a Flapjack Fundraiser at Applebees Neighborhood Grill and Bar, 2610 W Memorial, from 8 to 10 a.m. Saturday. The cost is $7 per person and $5.15 will directly benefit Austin's Change for Children.

Just $100 will send a Vietnamese child to school for a year, the Evans family noted.

Additionally, the family will raffle a set of Thunder tickets in support of the fundraiser. The fundraising is one way the Evans family shows their gratitude to God for bringing them together, family members said.

Family's journey

In 2006, Bill and Kim Evans thought they were finished raising children. Their daughter was about to graduate from high school and go off to college when a family acquaintance sparked an idea that would change the couple's lives.

The acquaintance had adopted a child from Vietnam. Soon the Evans heard about Austin, who had been left at an orphanage in the Vihn Long Province by his birth mother when he was only a day old.

“She made an adoption plan for him, and she made sure that when she left him, she had him warmly wrapped up and left him somewhere that they would find him immediately. She wanted a good life for him,” Kim Evans said.