来自我们的义工

Hello from Guangxi!

Our Half the Sky programs here at the Nanning Children’s Welfare Institution are doing incredibly well. After only one year of operation, it seems to me that these are some of our happiest programs. The children are simply blossoming – especially those little preschoolers who have found their forever families in HTS’ Nanning Family Village. They just can’t wait to bring us home and show us their very own mom and dad. Same thing happened a couple of weeks ago while visiting our brand new Family Village in Chongqing. The children are so full of joy!

One little girl in Chongqing was diagnosed autistic. She never spoke, lived closed in her own world. When I visited her home in Chongqing FV, she pointed to the family photo on the wall and said, “My mama.” Her new parents positively beamed.

We’re in Nanning with all our HTS program directors, field supervisors and program coordinators for a week of curriculum planning. We’re developing training materials that will help our field staff to train others in HTS program methods at institutions where we won’t actually operate the programs. We want to help orphanages to offer this kind of nurturing care to their children on their own.

Next week, also in Nanning, we’ll bring together all of our nanny supervisors and about 100 of our teachers for our annual program conference. Besides special sessions in working with children with various physical challenges, introducing music into the lives of the youngest children, presentations from field supervisors, teaching teams and program directors, we’ll be trying to identify which of our terrific staff might be ready to move up to become field supervisors and trainers. By fall of this year, we’ll be holding our first training completely run by field staff. It’s pretty exciting to contemplate how many children we may one day be able to reach.

And also this fall, we hope to be opening our first centers in Hubei Province – in Wuhan and Huangshi. Here’s an official call for volunteers for the Wuhan build: September 16-21. If you are interested, please download an application. We won’t be bringing a crew to Huangshi (a very small program), but you’ll get a chance to meet the nannies and Family Village parents in training while in Wuhan.

As you’ve probably heard me say once or twice, this year’s Children’s Day Challenge will determine whether the Hubei builds are a go. For those whom I have somehow missed (how can that be?!) here’s a clip about our Challenge:

“This fall, with your help and a challenge from one loving dad, we will bring our four programs to Hubei Province…. The dad, a man who has supported our work for many years, offers us a grant in celebration of his Chinese daughter and of Children’s Day this year. But it comes with a challenge. This donor has committed US$75,000. Now, it is up to us to match it…two times over. That means we need to raise US$150,000 by July 31. If we succeed, that US$225,000 will allow Half the Sky, and all of us who care so much about the children, to commence the next phase of our journey to bring a caring adult into the life of every orphaned child in China.

— We will create a Baby Sisters Infant Nurture Center, a Little Sisters Preschool, a Big Sisters Program and a Family Village at the Wuhan Children’s Welfare Institution.

— We will create a Baby Sisters Infant Nurture Center, a Big Sisters Program and a Family Village at the Huangshi Children’s Welfare Institution.

— And in partnership with China’s Ministry of Civil Affairs, Half the Sky will create the first provincial-level Half the Sky training center, making our four programs available to every welfare institution in Hubei!

Children’s Day is the one day in China where every child is told that somebody cares about her. But it doesn’t have to end when June 1 is over. If it’s love and nurture and attention that turns lives around, if those simple things make all the difference, then why not help us to make Children’s Day happen every single day for every single orphaned child?

…Every gift, large or small, will help us reach our goal. Together, we can make all the difference.”

I’m very happy to tell you today that we’ve raised $79,375 – more than ½ way there! We still have a way to go though. Won’t you help? http://give.halfthesky.org/prostores/servlet/StoreFront

On June 17 in many parts of the world we will celebrate Fathers Day. A gift to HTS’ Good Time Fund in Dad’s honor will pay for preschool outings, goldfish for the class aquarium, flower seeds for the garden. That special dad, granddad or dad-to-be will receive a beautiful certificate in tribute to him and the Good Times he brings to the children in his life. I haven’t seen the actual certificate in our online store yet, but you can see a similar sample right here: http://give.halfthesky.org/prostores/servlet/Detail?no=63

And, for some of us, school’s out! How about a Teacher Appreciation Certificate to thank your child’s favorite teachers? http://give.halfthesky.org/prostores/servlet/Detail?no=54

Finally, we’re planning for our annual October Half the Sky auction, and have already received some generous donations, including a signed copy and poster of Rose A. Lewis’ new “Every Year on Your Birthday” book and poster and a copy of her best-selling “I Love You Like Crazy Cakes.” We’d love to include more signed items related to chidren and/or China, artwork, quilts, collector’s dolls, unique events, jewelry and any other special treasures that you’d like to contribute to help our Half the Sky programs keep going. If you have an auction contribution or would like to volunteer to help organize, catalog items, etc. please contact Carla at volunteer@halfthesky.org.

After the Nanning program conference, ZZ and I will head to Guangdong to visit all of our six HTS sites there, including the four newest: Maoming, Maonan, Qingyuan and Shaoguan. I’ll let you know how they’re doing!

Happy almost-summer. And thank you for making it possible for Half the Sky to do this great work. We feel so fortunate!

Gong Xi Fa Cai! Chun Jie Kuai Le!I just returned home from a visit to our center at the Guangzhou Welfare Institution – the Half the Sky Center that doubled in size thanks to your help last Children’s Day. The whole place was electric with holiday preparations.While the more than 100 babies in our Infant Nurture Center were snuggled in the arms of their HTS nannies or toddled about, oblivious to the goings-on, all three floors of our Little Sisters Preschool classrooms were decorated with red lanterns and golden garlands and wildly colorful children’s art. One room was stacked with piles of New Year goodies for the next day’s celebration. The children were just giddy with excitement.And every little one I asked knew that a new year was coming.

The first phase of our Family Village at Guangzhou SWI is finally completed and the 45 children who’ve been matched with families are stunningly happy to be celebrating this new year in their own homes with their own Mama and Baba. They were so proud to show me what “our Mama” made for lunch. I sure wish we were able to make this happen for every single child who is deemed “unadoptable”. It’s not only a new year, it’s a whole new life!

Our dear Rebecca, the former Big Sister who now works in our Beijing office told me this week, “Some may think I have no family, but I do. Half the Sky is my family.”

Now I want to wish you a Happy New Year and Happy Spring Festival from Half the Sky’s board, staff, volunteers and the thousands of children in our family….

May the New Year of the Golden Pig bring you happiness, contentment, peace and prosperity! And always…the loving warmth of family.

Happy Holidays from the staff, volunteers and, especially, the children of Half the Sky!

We all want to thank you for making this a phenomenal year for our work to help China’s orphaned children. Since January, we’ve created 5 complete new Children’s Centers providing nurture and enrichment programs to children from birth through teens, expanded our preschools and infant nurture centers at 3 institutions and built 6 new Family Villages to enable children who will never be adopted to grow up in permanent, loving families. We now work in 30 welfare institutions and support 80 permanent foster families across China.

And next year we hope to create 5 more Children’s Centers and 4 new Family Villages as well as launching a new initiative to provide training and support to caregivers in welfare institutions that have no HTS Children’s Centers. Thousands of orphaned children’s lives are touched daily by our work. But it is, of course, your support that makes all of our plans and dreams for China’s orphans real. The gift you give to a waiting child in China through Half the Sky is the sort that won’t be found under any Christmas tree or inside any stocking. Your gift to Half the Sky’s nurture and enrichment programs will help children to know that they are loved and that they matter in this world. It’s simply the best gift of all.If you haven’t done so yet, before the year has passed, won’t you consider dropping by our website at www.halfthesky.org or calling our Berkeley office at 1(510)525-3377 to find out how you can help?Again, thank you for all you have already given. What a difference we are making in children’s lives!

With warm wishes from Jenny and all of us at Half the Sky….

May you know peace and happiness in the New Year!

By Elizabeth Brokamp
Courtesy of The Motley Fool
December 15, 2006

Our youngest daughter’s “birth” into our family started with a phone call on June 28, 2005. The adoption agency’s China program director parceled out tiny bits of information about this little person who would change our lives: “Your baby was born in October of 2004 in Jiangsu province, her name means ‘beautiful and peaceful,’ and she’s lived in an orphanage.” Then the director added, “Half the Sky has a program there; you’re very lucky.”

And so began our love affair with our daughter, Zoe, and the amazing organization that helped to transform her life. Half the Sky had arrived to renovate the Gaoyou Social Welfare Institute, the orphanage where Zoe lived, in April of 2005, when Zoe was just seven months old. The renovation to the physical environment alone was stunning, the effort of a team of volunteers who turned a stark, derelict-looking building into something softer, kinder, and more stimulating. But the other part of the work — the reason I get tears in my eyes whenever Half the Sky is mentioned — is what Half the Sky did to bring warmth and nurturing into her life, and what it continues to do to transform the lives of countless other orphaned children across China.

An overwhelming number of children live in orphanages across China, most of them girls, with only their basic needs being met. That’s probably how our smart, funny, fiercely loving little girl spent her first seven months of life. Enter Half the Sky. Named after the Chinese adage “women hold up half the sky,” this organization establishes infant-nurturing centers for orphaned babies, Little Sisters preschools for toddlers, Big Sisters programs to educate older girls who have grown up in institutions, and Family Villages, which provide family-style care for children whose special needs preclude them from ever being adopted. In Zoe’s orphanage, Gaoyou SWI, Half the Sky worked with the staff to train nannies, the children’s caregivers, in child development; to combine Eastern and Western ideas about the need to hold babies and have them on the floor and out of a crib; and, very importantly, to offer the resources to allow this to happen. They do this with unprecedented cooperation from the Chinese government, something Half the Sky’s director, Jenny Bowen, has worked very hard to achieve.

For our family, this isn’t just the description of a charitable act by a philanthropic organization. It’s how we came to have a daughter who could, at 10-and-a-half months old, make some eye contact and turn an expectant little face to mine whenever she mastered a new skill, as if to say, “OK, clap for me!” It’s how Zoe, having been institutionalized for her entire life, could arrive at her American pediatrician’s office and be pronounced developmentally “on target.” It’s how she could come to accept the love of a family, something very hard to do if you’ve never been taught to trust. I think about the love and warmth I was able to shower on our older two children from the time I knew I was pregnant. My maternity shirts all had circles imprinted on them from where I rubbed my ever-increasing belly; I sang and talked to them constantly those many months. And after they were born, I was able to carry them close to my heart in a baby carrier. For Zoe, I wasn’t able to do those things; in fact, no one did them. Zoe’s head was actually flattened in the back from having lain in her crib so much during those early days.

But because of Half the Sky, Zoe’s story changed when she was seven months old. By the time I met her to bring her home to America, she very clearly knew that someone cared. On my trip to China, I was able to visit the orphanage, meet her nanny, and watch Zoe’s face light up at the sight of her. The two of them — the daughter I had met only days before and the woman who’d nurtured her — played together on the floor mats, while in elaborate pantomime her nanny (who knew no English) and I (who knew no Chinese) communicated. I repeated, “Thank you, thank you,” as I watched them play, knowing that the obvious joy she took in Zoe was something priceless. When our guides said it was time to leave, you would be hard-pressed to find a dry eye anywhere.

An orphanage, even a great one, isn’t a substitute for a family. But orphanage life is a reality for so many precious children in China (and around the world). Until the work is done and every child has a home and family of his or her own, we can only hope that Half the Sky will be there.

Fool contributor Elizabeth Brokamp and her husband, Robert Brokamp, editor of The Motley Fool’s Rule Your Retirementnewsletter, count Half the Sky as one of the miracles in their lives.

Here’s a fun challenge for Half the Sky volunteers: FamilyFun, in partnership with Disney, is offering the FamilyFun Volunteers Program, which recognizes U.S. families that volunteer together to benefit others or improve the community or world. For five Grand Prize families, Disney will donate $5,000 to the charity or public school of their choice, and for 25 First Prize families, Disney will donate $1,000 to the charity or public school of their choice. Each of the winning families will also receive a package of FamilyFun books and kits. The contest requires a contestant family of not less than two persons, at least one of whom is less than 18 and one is 18 or older. All applications must be submitted by January 15, 2007. Visit Family Fun’s website for entry rules and online application guidelines.  How about creating a unique holiday event to benefit Half the Sky programs and entering the contest?

Jenny, Here’s my nomination on The Motley Fool’s Foolanthropy Drive 2006.  The way it works is that the Fool community chimes in to support certain nominations and based on response, their staff committee votes on 5 charities for which to raise money. After they chose the 5 (sometime in November), then the Fool community of readers steps up to donate. The charity that receives the greatest amount of donations gets an extra $10,000; The Motley Fool donates 2 cents for every board post in December to be divided up among the other 4 remaining charities. At any rate, the Half the Sky community can help out in a big way by first echoing the nomination so that the committee takes notice. Last year, the campaign raised over $270,000; this year they are also partnering with the Hilton Corporation to try and make it even more successful.

On a personal note, my husband and I went all through the HTS site last night, looking at pictures of Gaoyou SWI where our daughter Zoe lived, as well as reading about all of the other amazing accomplishments of HTS in such a short time. I had tears rolling down my cheeks; truly, your work is transformative and an enormous gift to the world. Many thanks and my deepest admiration. Warmly, Elizabeth Brokamp

The Annual HTS Auction begins on Tuesday, October 17, 6pm EDT!

It runs for one week: October 17-24.The auction is international this year. We have more than 200 items! We have Mei Mei books, signed by all three contributors; soon-to-be-unavailable limited edition Good Morning China books; a very small number of 10th anniversary items from CCAA, and treasures given by some of the institutions where we work. We have Going Home Barbies; artwork; jewelry (a lot of jewelry); one-of-a-kind handcrafted quilts and quilted items; silk outfits; brand new children’s clothing (GAP, Old Navy, Oshkosh); bath and body items; adoption related books; children’s books; a Spring Pearl Doll; tote bags; scrap booking items; a mini-doll house room; notecards; a Chinese silver coin collection; silk purses; China Girl pillow covers and tote bags for children; baby items; cultural goodies; Beijing 2008 Olympic items and for our supporters in the San Francisco Bay Area, we have a gourmet dinner for 8 and more!

You can find the auction here or by clicking on the link on our Half the Sky home page.Also, HTS supporter Elizabeth Rouse has written a fun article on ‘the buying season’ for the Motley Fool.  The Motley Fool has begun to accept nominations for charities to benefit from their 2006 Foolanthropy drive. If you are a visitor to Motley Fool, please consider echoing Elizabeth’s kind nomination of Half the Sky.Thanks everyone and happy bidding! 

Thanks to every one of you who helped us meet our Children’s Day Challenge, Half the Sky will soon be doubling the size of its Preschool and Infant Nurture Center at the Guangzhou Children’s Welfare Institution.No longer will half the children know the love and nurturing care of special HTS teachers and nannies while the other half waits through empty days. In just one month we raised $100,249. $249 over our goal! 

Today I’ve had the supreme pleasure of inviting the Guangzhou CWI director to hire more teachers and more nannies and to arrange for renovation of rooms in preparation for a fall expansion. We’ll be training the new staff this September during our Nanjing training. By October 1, the Chinese National Holiday, every single small child at the Guangzhou orphanage will know somebody cares about her. You made that happen. There are lots of other great things going on right now in China too!

And I just attended a most exciting and moving training for teachers and foster parents as part of our new programs for children orphaned by AIDS in Henan Province. Thanks to the Ford Foundation, we already have HTS sponsored foster projects in operation all over that province and later this month we’ll open a unique foster village project—converting a government orphanage into family homes. We’ll launch the new programs with a series of very special summer camps, which will then segue into a first-of-its-kind school intervention program developed using HTS methods.I’ll tell you more about it and some other exciting initiatives in our upcoming Summer-Fall newsletter.

If you have a few spare minutes this week, there’s an easy and fun way you can help Half the Sky. We’ve been selected by GlobalGiving.com to compete for funding and a spot on their website. Only 3 of the 35 finalists will join the projects donors can fund on the site. Right now through July 20, you can help by voting for Half the Sky.Just go to GlobalGiving, create a free account, and vote. You’ll have a virtual $100 to spend on every page, which you can split however you’d like among the 35 projects. Just look for the “Foster families for 50 disabled orphans in China” project and “spend” $100 to help HTS win a space on the GlobalGiving website to support its foster village projects.

Over time, your cost-free gift could be worth a great deal to China’s orphans. You do not actually make a donation—it’s completely free to vote. It’s easy. It costs only a moment of your time.

Remember the Nunes Family? In early April Kate, Ron and 6-year-old Elizabeth Nunes set off on a 3-seater bicycle pedaling across America to raise funds for HTS. Well, they’ve almost reached the end of their journey. At last report they were somewhere in Montana, pedaling for home in Poulsbo, Washington.