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GREENSBORO — In two recent North Carolina adoptions, DVDs filmed by a local company clinched the deal.

A Raleigh-area woman adopted three teenage boys after viewing their “adoption chronicles,” created by Greensboro-based Keen Innovations, said Cindy Knul, director of recruitment outreach for the Children’s Home Society of North Carolina.

The woman said that if she had just read their profiles, she wouldn’t have adopted them, Knul said.

In another case, a “family chronicle” the company made for Lori Moller’s family swayed a North Carolina adoption panel to choose them over three other families, Moller said.

“You can read a piece of paper. You can look at a picture,” said Moller, 40, of Woodstock, Ga. “But a video...it has more impact.”

Keen Innovations started the “adoption chronicles” about two years ago after owner Dustin Keene ran into Knul.

He had bought the Web site for adoptionchronicles.com after seeing a photographer donating pictures for adoption profiles. Keene, who had already started chronicling the lives of schoolchildren as they grow up to create family keepsakes, wanted to use the concept to help children waiting for adoption.

“We believe they have the right to speak for themselves,” Keene said.

In North Carolina, more than 3,000 children are waiting to be adopted. But there are never enough families, Knul said.

“The more families we’re able to identify and train, the better able we are to match them with the child,” she said.

Knul said she believes the adoption and family chronicles could help improve that process. Traditionally, families look through portfolios that include social worker reports, photos and other information on the children. Families looking to adopt compile similar profiles for examination by adoption agencies, foster families and caregivers.

“Sometimes people read what social workers have written on a piece of paper and it doesn’t fairly represent a child’s day,” Knul said.

She recently saw a child’s profile that hadn’t been updated in three years. So it didn’t show the child had been through therapy to deal with issues in the report, Knul said.

“Who can better represent that child than the child themselves?” she asked. “There’s always adults making decisions for them. It just gives them a voice.”

So far, grants have paid for the DVDs, which cost about $300 each to make and copy. But that has limited how many children can get them. Knul would like to get sponsors so more children can participate.

Keene also encourages families looking at adoption to consider a family chronicle.

The Mollers found out in April that their family chronicle had helped them get picked to adopt siblings, a boy, 7, and a girl, 6. The adoption still needs to be finalized. The Mollers visit the kids every few weekends and talk every day by phone.

Before they even met, though, the children already knew them through the DVD, Moller said.

They knew about the Mollers’ older son, who was adopted from Russia two years ago, and about Ruby, the dog. They knew how Lori laughs and that her husband, Peter, speaks with a deep voice. The video did more than pave the way for the adoption; it smoothed the way for that first meeting.

“If you can’t be there in person to make your own case,” Moller said, “you’ve got a video to do it.”

Contact Jennifer Fernandez at 373-7064 or jennifer.fernandez@news-record.com