Adopted teen's life becomes film

By Staff Writer

This week, a movie about adopted teen India Meadow is being shown to promote the Bates Foundation, which provides custom-made prom dresses to underprivileged or hard-to-fit adolescents from Chicago's inner city. The troubled teen's life was turned around by Barbara Bates, a Chicago fashion designer and founder of the foundation, news channel ABC reports. Now their story has been made into a film called India of K-Town.

The documentary by Chicago filmmaker Beverly Price explores the devastating past Meadow had to overcome, and how she now has a hopeful future because of a custom-made prom dress, which was created by Bates, who had once struggled as a teen mother. Bates' gift to Meadow changed the girl's outlook on life.

Through her foundation, Bates provides prom wear for teens who cannot afford to buy it.

During the 1990s, there were approximately 120,000 adoptions of children each year. This number has remained fairly constant, and is still relatively proportionate to population size in the U.S., according to Flango and Flango.