Founder and heart of the organization, Marcia Engel knows what it's like to be separated from her parents. As a two-year-old girl she came to the Netherlands where she grew up with her adoptive parents and this has not always been easy, to say the least.

Marcia: "When I was a little girl I was often sad, I felt different, misunderstood. At that time I didn’t even know that I was adopted. Only at the age of eleven my adoptive mother told me that. It was as if the ground beneath my feet disappeared. I began even more to struggle with my identity and questions like 'Who am I?’ and ‘What is my existence for?’ kept running in my head.

To get some answers about my roots, I started searching for my biological parents, so I could continue with my life. What followed was a difficult search for many years in which all doors remained closed until I went to pay. Then suddenly I found my family within four months...

So much effort and so much money to find my own family! The right to have contact with his family is a right that every child should be given! At that moment I thought to myself: this should be different, I am going to help people. And this should go beyond searching for birth relatives. I want to make people aware of their rights and opportunities.

In 2008 Plan Angel was a fact!