Hello Friends,

A little over a month after Sichuan’s May 12th earthquake, we opened Half the Sky’s first BigTop children’s activity center (with preschool, art classes and counseling) in a refugee camp in Dujiangyan, near the quake’s epicenter. In a town that has experienced so much sadness, the opening was a happy, festive occasion to welcome a new oasis for fun and support for the children and the community. On hand for the opening were city and ministry officials, child trauma experts Marleen Wong and Suh Hsiao Chen of National Center for School Trauma and Bereavement, and psychologists representing our newest partners in this important effort, the Mental Health Centre of West China Hospital at Sichuan University.

The experts offered some training for assembled volunteers and, as at every celebration worth its salt in China, a group of adorable children sang and danced for the crowd. For a brief moment, the earthquake seemed a world away.

http://www.halfthesky.org/work/earthquake08-healing.php#part2

Even before the opening the BigTop had become a magnet for children, a place where they can play and share even their most troubling earthquake experiences. A few days earlier, when the furniture was being painted, curious children arrived again at the tent and were disappointed not to be allowed in because of the paint fumes. Half the Sky staffers couldn’t bear to send the children away so they set up a table outside the tent, on the concrete platform (above the mud) where the children played with bubbles and toys.

Three little girls made themselves comfortable and the oldest, a nine-year-old, immediately put a plastic doll face down under a toy table to protect the doll from an earthquake. She told her friends and a Half the Sky staffer about the day of the quake, when her teacher ran out of the classroom, expecting the class to follow. Instead, the children sat at their desks until they heard their teacher yelling that they should get out as fast as they could.

All three girls then started cooking with toy utensils, chopping up leaves with a toy cleaver to make soup. When asked why they were only making vegetables, one girl said solemnly: “Because we are very poor. This is all we have.”

Another girl, around 10, took advantage of the ample art supplies in the tent to draw a girl with pigtails and a rainbow. She solemnly explained that she wants to be a mathematician and the drawing was not a self portrait. It was a drawing of her best friend, who after the earthquake left the area and now there is no way to contact her: “I am afraid I’ll never see her again.”

While the volunteers and staff at the tent will provide “psychological first aid” for the children, they will also refer children to professionals at the Mental Health Centre of West China Hospital at Sichuan University when first aid is not enough. Children like a terrified 6 year old girl who, after 50 hours, was the only survivor rescued from her primary school. Protected by the body of her teacher, she survived with minimal physical injuries. But no one could protect her from the emotional trauma of waiting for help for so many hours in the school where her friends and her teacher died and - after all that - learning that her father did not survive.

Of the many volunteers who helped in the tent or attended our trainings none is more impressive than a group of eight survivors from the collapsed Juyuan Middle School, where perhaps 900 children died. Whether pitching in to sweep rainwater from the BigTop before its drainage problems were fixed, or helping to set up toys on newly painted shelves, or playing with children, these impressive, hardworking teenagers have all decided that they want to focus on helping others rather than on what they lost on the day their school collapsed around them: “We received a lot of help from others. Now we can help. When we help people it helps us,” says one of the students, who gathered in a circle in Half the Sky’s BigTop.

One smiling boy bears the most obvious scar of that day—a gash that took fourteen stitches to close. It runs alongside his eye down to his mouth.

Like all of the children who survived, he is mindful of friends who did not: “At first I felt guilty that I survived. Now because I am volunteering I feel more comfortable.”

The students from Juyuan also provide an example of what was perhaps NCSTB’s Dr. Marleen Wong’s most surprising message to the caregivers she trained in Sichuan. In the midst of the all-too-obvious devastation and pain wrought by the earthquake, Wong introduced new research about a phenomenon called “post-traumatic growth.” A small percentage of children, says Wong, will make positive life changes that are a direct result of a trauma or a disaster. These are the children, says Wong who become “wise beyond their years, more mature, have a deeper appreciation of life,” in the wake of a tragedy. “They have new values and life priorities.”

One Juyuan student explains that not only has he resolved to volunteer in the wake of the earthquake, he has also resolved to change his life:

“Before the earthquake I was not into studying. Now I think it is the most important thing I can do so I can help my country. I can bring hope to the people in Sichuan.”

The day after BigTop #1 opened, I had the great honor of carrying the Olympic Torch on behalf of China’s orphaned children, especially those newly orphaned in Sichuan and Chongqing. Fifty preschoolers from our Half the Sky programs in Chengdu and Chongqing joined me on a rainy Sunday in Wanzhou, Chongqing. It was an exhilarating and wacky time. And we did manage to tell the children’s story – at least to the Chinese media (in the end, no foreign media was allowed.) We were on the front page of the China Daily and featured on national TV news. We didn’t quite go global, but it has been wonderful to hear from so many Chinese citizens who want to help orphaned children. Children in their own communities that they didn’t even know existed.

Half the Sky supporter Anne Chambers has found another innovative way to help young earthquake victims. Her company, RED212, has launched an annual Bill and Warren Day (to commemorate the day Warren Buffett pledged his fortune to the Gates Foundation) to celebrate business people, big and small, as a force for social change. HTS’ Children’s Earthquake Fund is to be the first beneficiary, by auction of a Monopoly game signed by Warren Buffett himself! If you or some other mogul you know would like a shot at this treasure, I’m told there is only one day left!

http://cgi.ebay.com/Warren-Buffett-Autographed-Official-Monopoly-Game_W0QQitemZ250260912893QQihZ015QQcategoryZ156999QQssPageNameZWDVWQQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem

Slowly but steadily, Half the Sky is beginning to find ways to recover from the disaster too. Although we are now firmly committed to helping the newly orphaned and displaced children of Sichuan heal and hopefully find their own “post-traumatic growth,” we are ever-mindful of the many thousands of children to whom we’ve already made a long-term commitment.

Right now, our first Blue Sky provincial training is underway in Hubei Province. Over 100 caregivers from welfare institutions where Half the Sky has no programs are at our model center in Wuhan learning about HTS’ approach to providing family-like nurturing care to orphaned children. We are now offering Blue Sky training sponsorships – a great way to help us reach our goal to put a caring adult in the life of every orphaned child http://give.halfthesky.org/prostores/servlet/Detail?no=90

This fall, funds permitting, Half the Sky will open new Blue Sky Model Centers in Xian, Harbin, Shenyang and Qingdao. We are no longer accepting applications for this year’s volunteer build but we dearly hope that you will consider sponsoring a child or supporting the new model centers in other ways.

You have been so tremendously generous during these awful weeks. Now, as the Sichuan story fades from the news, we are even more grateful that you continue to remember the children whose struggle is just beginning. I don’t know how we can ever thank you enough for all you have done and continue to do. I hope that watching our progress as we work to rebuild young lives – in Sichuan and all over China – will be thanks enough. You know we will always keep you informed!

This should be the last of our emergency updates. I’ll now return to writing you every month or two. Of course, if you don’t wish to receive further updates from Half the Sky, please unsubscribe by sending a blank email to leave-half_the_sky@titan.sparklist.com

If you would like to donate to Half the Sky’s Children’s Earthquake Fund you can do so by calling Half the Sky (+1-510-525-3377) or visit our

website:

http://give.halfthesky.org/prostores/servlet/Categories?category=Children’s+Earthquake+Fund

If you would like a Canadian tax receipt, please donate at

http://www.canadahelps.org/CharityProfilePage.aspx?CharityID=s86248

If you would like a Hong Kong tax receipt, please call Half the Sky – Asia

(+852-2520-5266) or donate online at

https://www.paydollar.com/b2c2/eng/charity/payInfo.jsp?charityId=4947

If you’d like to view previous earthquake journal entries:

http://www.halfthesky.org/journal/

Thank you!

Hello Friends, We got a call today telling us that, for security reasons, our Torch leg is now scheduled a day earlier. I will be running in Wanzhou, Chongqing, on Sunday, June 15 - Father’s Day. I will still run for the children, especially those of Sichuan. Somehow, we will manage to bring the children there. I hope it doesn’t change again!

I just arrived in Chongqing from Sichuan. Yesterday was the one month anniversary of the earthquake. We traveled several hours to a hard-hit mountain town in Beichuan, Hongbaizhen, and worked with children and volunteer teachers. I have added many photos to our website.

A couple of weeks earlier, we braved the rock-strewn roads and broken bridges of Hongbaizhen to deliver relief goods to the children. The whole town was in shock. As painful as yesterday’s visit was, we began to see signs that the town will slowly begin to come back to life. Our communications director, Patricia King gave me this moving report: An 8-year-old boy stands in front of the pile of rubble that had once been his school and explains that he was the last student to have been pulled out alive. When the earth shook, he was one of the obedient children sitting with arms crossed at their desks—some naughty boys were still outside, safe on the playground. For ten frantic minutes, trapped between a piece of concrete and brick on the second floor, he waited. His cries couldn’t be heard over the wailing adults, but finally when the crowd outside the collapsing school quieted down they heard him and came to rescue him with their bare hands.

In the first days after the quake, he couldn’t return to the pile of debris that had once been his three-storey school, but with the help of a volunteer teacher from his tent school, he has visited the site several times and now is not afraid when he comes back. Today, at 2:28, exactly one month after his world shattered, the boy and another child from the tent school placed their hands on their hearts, then bowed three times, saying goodbye to their friends who died at the Hongbaizhen Primary School. Finally these brave survivors vowed: “We will live our lives as best we can.”

In Hongbaizhen, an isolated mountain town where it took three days for the Air Force to make it on foot past a collapsed bridge while the cries of children trapped under heavy rubble grew weaker and weaker and then stopped forever, the pain is palpable. But one month after the earthquake children and adults are also expressing their grief, working to find a way to cope with their pain, and taking the first steps to rebuilding lives. Sitting under a tree outside a tent school only 100 yards from the collapsed Hongbaizhen Middle School, it took only minutes before a group of middle school girls, two with their heads bent into their arms and one sitting up straight, weeping and sobbing, opened their hearts to Vancouver psychologist Dan Zhang and University of Minnesota psychologist Pinian Chang, both of whom were also once students in China. A 14-year-old twin, who aches for her one-minute-younger sister. She escaped the building, but her sister didn’t. Finally her sister was pulled out of the rubble, but with no medical care available, her family listened helpless as she spoke her last words: “I hurt. I hurt. I am so tired. I think I am dying.” Now her grieving sister refuses to go to any school with more than one storey—she tried a middle school with two stories and dropped out after two agonizing days. Still she is trying to take comfort from “Invisible Wings,” the song she and her sister loved and sang together. “I know I’ve always had a pair of invisible wings that take me flying and give me hope.”

Two girls mourning their brother, a 10th grader, and a nimble athlete as well as a good student, who made it out of the building. But he went back to rescue three crying girls only to die when another piece of the building gave way. One of his sisters is tormented by regrets—why did she brush off her brother, who wanted to talk to her a few days before the earthquake when she wasn’t in the mood? Both sisters know that their brother died a hero, but they miss their older brother and cry for him as an adult volunteer encircles them in a hug to try to ease the pain. Meanwhile inside a white tent decorated with balloons and tinsel, a crowd of volunteers hungry for help sit at shiny wooden desks salvaged from the collapsed middle school. Executive Director Jenny Bowen tells them that Half the Sky’s greatest contribution to helping in Sichuan will be to provide training for caregivers. She urges them to identify adults in the local community who can be trained to provide consistent, long-term help for the children long after the last volunteers have gone back to their homes. When she tells them that Half the Sky is committed to working in Sichuan for “at least five years,” they burst into applause. It soon becomes clear why the applause is so heartfelt. These volunteers, some recently arrived and some soon to go back home to their own families, have bonded closely with the children and they know the children will need support for a long time. One wears a beautiful shell bracelet made for her by one of the girls who has become like a little sister. Another favored volunteer’s arms, face, and t-shirt have been decorated by playful children using colored markers. Both the volunteers and the children who cling to them are finding it difficult to even conceive of their leaving. Psychologist Marleen Wong and psychiatric social worker Suh Chen Hsiao of the National Center for Trauma & Bereavement tell the volunteers they have given the children a great gift by providing a school and a routine for the children. Research shows that children who go back to school soon after a disaster fare better than children who have no routine for a long period of time. They also praise the volunteers for developing such strong bonds with the children and then urge those who are leaving to find a new local volunteer they trust to work together with the children before they leave. They also urge the volunteers themselves to get together after they leave Hongzbaizhen to talk through their feelings among peers who understand what it is to try to provide comfort to traumatized children living in a tent school surrounded by rubble and soldiers wearing white masks spreading disinfectant on the site where so many of their friends died.

The volunteers, some with tears in their eyes, explain why they are worried for the children and feel helpless because they cannot help them more. They worry about a 5-year-old girl with a scar on her back from being buried by debris who screams whenever she sees a collapsed building, an unavoidable sight in this mostly leveled town. A thirteen year old boy, the last to be pulled out of the middle school, refuses to come to the tent school so close to where he was trapped. A six year-old boy whose two brothers died, draws a picture with cherries because his brothers liked cherries, but this volunteer thinks he is too calm, toomatter-of-fact: “I am so worried about him. I ache for him.” Wong tells them they have done well. “Do not underestimate how much good kindness can do.” She recommends that they continue to reach out to the 13-year-old afraid to go to school. Visit him at home, offer him some water, bring him some notes from his friends. For the 5-year-old, try to have her draw or tell why she is screaming and help her learn to breathe deeply when she is afraid so that slowly, slowly the screams become less frequent and finally go away. And for the too-calm child, sometimes children have a delayed reaction, which is why long-term help is socrucial: “We have to wait for the child.”

For the Hongbaizhen parents heartbroken by the loss of their children, there was no delayed reaction—they have expressed their grief since the day of the earthquake and they still show it in their eyes that well up with tears even when they express nascent hope for a future life. On this one month anniversary one tiny mom, her hair flecked with gray, shows visitors cell phone photos of the two children she lost. She lowers her arms to illustrate the unthinkable, the collapse of her daughters’ school.She walks slowly away, but not without first thanking Half the Sky and everyone else who has come to help. It is that support, she says, that has recently made it possible for her to start to at least imagine a future for herself without her children. And a short climb up one of the mountains that made Hongbaizhen renowned for its beauty before it became renowned for its suffering, parents are still trying to comfort their children, who died four weeks ago.

At the four-tiered hillside cemetery with hundreds of children’s freshly made graves, parents have laid things that their children once loved—a pink backpack, wrapped candy, spicy Sichuanese snacks, a big teddy bear and a stuffed monkey. A weeping dad injured in the quake, his arm still in a sling, burns paper money and incense and apologizes to his child. “I am so sorry. This is the first time I could come. I hope you don’t mind,” while his wife wails the lament of every parent who has wished that they could have saved the life of the child even at the cost of their own: “Mommy is here for you. How could you go before us? Please wait for us.”

If you would like to donate to Half the Sky’s Children’s Earthquake Fund you can do so by calling Half the Sky (+1-510-525-3377) or visit our website: http://give.halfthesky.org/prostores/servlet/Categories?category=Children’s+Earthquake+Fund

If you would like a Canadian tax receipt, please donate athttp://www.canadahelps.org/CharityProfilePage.aspx?CharityID=s86248 If you would like a Hong Kong tax receipt, please call Half the Sky – Asia(+852-2520-5266) or donate online athttps://www.paydollar.com/b2c2/eng/charity/payInfo.jsp?charityId=4947 If you’d like to view previous earthquake journal entries:http://www.halfthesky.org/journal/

Thank you! with love, Jenny Ps – For our many new friends - Half the Sky is a global NGO that establishes and operates programs that provide emotional and educational support for orphaned children living in government-run welfare institutions in China.

Half the Sky does not operate orphanages. It is not an adoption agency. We exist for China’s children.

Each year we offer a special gift to celebrate fathers that also celebrates China’s orphaned children. We call it The Good Time Fund and use the donations to pay for outings, parties and special fun activities for the children in our preschools. We know that in a lot of homes, dads are synonymous with good times and it’s always been a popular gift. This year, as we struggle to help so many children in Sichuan with their recent loss, it just doesn’t seem right. If you would like to honor that special father this year, please consider donating to Half the Sky’s Children’s Earthquake Fund in his honor instead. Dad will receive a card telling him that his gift also honors all those fathers who lost their children and will directly help those children who lost their daddies.

Dear Friends,

Last October – what seems like a lifetime ago – many of you voted online and made it possible for me to win the Lenovo/China Daily competition to become one of eight foreigners living in China to carry the Olympic Torch. My goal was to run with children from our HTS programs on behalf of all of China’s orphaned children. As fate or happenstance would have it, my bit of Torch history is now scheduled to take place in Wanzhou, Chongqing on June 16 – just next door to earthquake-battered Sichuan.

After the quake, I informed the Beijing Olympic Committee (BOCOG) that I would dedicate my run to the orphaned children of Sichuan. For security reasons, BOCOG will not let me run WITH the children, but they will certainly let me run FOR them. And BOCOG will let the children urge me along from the sidelines. So, if all goes well, 50 preschoolers from the Chengdu and Chongqing orphanages will be with me in Wanzhou. I don’t know if this will be televised but I promised to let you all know when/if our run would happen. You can be sure we’ll take lots of pictures!

Since I last wrote, we’ve been working toward developing a more well-defined plan for addressing the emotional needs of so many thousands of traumatized children. We know we can’t help them all, but we are making certain that, using the resources you are providing us, we will maximize our effectiveness.

Under the guidance of trauma experts from National Center for School Trauma and Bereavement and volunteer pediatric psychologists from China, the US and Canada, our field staff has been training caregivers in shelters and camps and talking with many, many children. What we have learned has informed our long-term plans, which already have tentative approval from the Ministry of Civil Affairs.

In the next couple of months, with your help, we will be creating giant tent “Big Top” Children’s Centers in temporary (estimate is 2-3 years) refugee camps at Dujiangyan, near the quake epicenter, to help the children as the town is rebuilt. Each will offer HTS preschool, after school counseling and art classes and other therapeutic activities for school-age children, as well as counseling and training for caregivers, teachers, parents and foster parents. The first “Big Top” is scheduled to open in QinJian camp on Saturday.

Funds permitting, we will also be creating new permanent children’s community centers in six quake-affected towns as well as setting up Family Villages, supporting traditional foster care, and other HTS programs for orphaned children who are able to remain in their communities, providing long-term support for thousands of children.

I stole away for a couple of days in order to write our proposal to the Ministry. In my absence, HTS communications director, Patricia King, wrote this report:

A Machine to Save the World from Earthquakes

“When I grow up I want to be a scientist so I can invent a machine that will predict earthquakes hours before they happen and I can take all the children to safety. And I will give the machine to everybody in the world for free.”

“All I want is to go home.”

“I want to be with my family.”

“I want the earthquake to be gone so we can be happy again.”

Who wouldn’t want to make these wishes of some of the youngest earthquake survivors come true? The wishes of children struggling to come to terms with a disaster that shattered everything they counted on—the rock solid earth they walked on, the mountains that were supposed to loom majestically above, not break apart, raining dangerous rocks, and most of all the comfort of their homes and their parents and teachers.

The children now attend a “tent school” in the large refugee shelter in Dujiangyan designed to house 15,000 people displaced by the earthquake. They are taught by volunteers in prefabricated, vinyl walled, 9×12 classrooms, each one packed with 40+ students.

The walls are decorated with children’s artwork. It is art that depicts the kind of world the children would like to live in, the kind of world they now know can never be. In this town where the most prestigious middle school collapsed and killed so many bright, ambitious students, one child drew a mobile school complete with a lookout telescope and radar to pick up any sign of danger. The school is floating on what looks like a cloud or a flame that can move it out of danger should the earth below start to shake again.

The Red Thread

A short distance from the refugee shelter and school, on a muddy, rock-strewn field, a huge, white tent with arched, plastic windows stands on high ground above the fast-moving Minjiang River. A large Half the Sky logo with its girl holding a red thread announces that this tent has been provided by donors all over the world, moved to help the children of Sichuan to whom they are connected by the proverbial red thread. One, yellow Ikea delivery truck and one truck with a small Half the Sky logo and the words: “Everything Donated to the Disaster Area” bump their way onto the field to deliver supplies for Half the Sky’s first Big Top Children’s Center. In a situation that is repeated over and over in Sichuan when people learn that Half the Sky is here to help the children, the Ikea truck was able to make the delivery only after a compassionate manager made lots of phone calls to bend the rules to allow the truck to deliver to a heavily damaged town.

All week Half the Sky’s field supervisors and other caregivers have been receiving training about how to provide “psychological first aid” to children in the wake of this disaster. Today the work is more familiar, the kind of work Half the Sky has been doing for 10 years during “builds” when rooms in government welfare institution are transformed into colorful, child-friendly Half the Sky centers.

It becomes clear very quickly though that there are unusual logistical issues for this first-ever tent build. The six inch concrete floor that anchors the tent is solid, but two puddles have collected inside after the last big rain storm. Straw brooms appear so the staff can sweep out the water and strategize about how to engineer a fix so the tent will stay dry during this rainy season in Sichuan. They are helped by a contractor from Guangzhou, who is in Sichuan to build roads wherever needed, including a road that will make it easier to walk from the huge refugee shelter and school to Half the Sky’s Big Top.

It is Dragon Boat Festival day and a holiday, but nevertheless workers on ladders bring electricity to the tent, hanging energy-saving bulbs from the aluminum rafters and setting up the fans that will cool the during the increasingly steamy Sichuan summer.

As the small chairs and tables, shelves for toys are assembled, and bright, turquoise chairs unfolded, the tent starts to look more like a Half the Sky center, a kid-friendly haven in an earthquake-ravaged town where the long task of removing rubble and rebuilding has only just begun.The toys will stay in their boxes for the children to open. There are puppet theaters, a toy kitchen with pots and pans and dishes, a doll house with a mom, dad and children. And there are lots of toy trucks and bulldozers, doctor kits, and uncharacteristically for a Half the Sky center, lots of soldiers, who were the first to reach Dujiangyan and other towns near the epicenter to help.

Nothing is the same anymore…

In Shifang City, Half the Sky’s Child Development Director Ma Lang approached a woman reading alone in a communal shelter where people were cooking and eating and two preschoolers were playing with water, “trying to be children.” The woman looked so young that Lang thought she might be a high school student, but she told Ma that she is a 27-year-old math teacher. There was a “calm coolness” in her eyes so MaLang was surprised that her eyes welled up with tears when Ma Lang asked: “How are you doing?” She answered sadly: “It is tough. I have been here all my life. Nothing is the same anymore. The only thing that hasn’t changed is the fields, the crops. Everything else has changed,” she said.

The teacher told Ma Lang that after the earthquake she helped escort all 41 children from her classroom to safety. Then she spent six, panicked hours that seemed like a year looking for her mother and her three-year-old daughter. Ma Lang put a comforting hand on her shoulder as they both found paper tissue and the woman continued with her story.

Then the Air Force came and carefully removed all the children’s school bags and clothes from the heavily damaged building. “It was very dangerous.” When the teachers tried to help, the soldiers said, “No, it is our job.” When the teachers volunteered to at least stand by the building to collect some of the children’s prized possessions, the soldiers said, “No. It is our job. You stay away from the building. It is not safe.” After retrieving the children’s things, the Air Force built a new, prefabricated school named the “Air Force Loves Children School” in six, working-round-the-clock days.

The young math teacher told Ma Lang that such help and such kindness from the Air Force and “so many people like you” has “made a huge difference” in the lives of those who survived the quake. But despite her gratitude for the help and her relief that her mother and three-year-old are alive, the woman told Ma Lang that there have been “many times” during the last weeks when she has wished that she hadn’t survived.

For Ma Lang, who has been working in the field since right after the earthquake, it is “overwhelming” to learn how many children and their caregivers need emotional support, even those “lucky” ones like this teacher, whose child and whose students survived the earthquake.

The psychologists who are helping Half the Sky train field workers stress that patience is key when working with traumatized children or their adult caregivers. Pediatric psychologist, Pi-nian Chang says it is important not to jump to conclusions and to be a good listener and; “Be quick to listen, listen carefully and be slow to talk.”

At the tent school in Dujiangyan, Chang noticed a taciturn, sad boy who stayed apart from the other children. Clearly not wanting to talk, the boy of about 11 did agree to a game of Chinese checkers with Chang. Slowly, slowly the boy spoke, telling Chang that his parents died in the earthquake and that he had no desire to play with other kids and little desire to go to live with his uncle, who will take him in. A few words from a sad child who is dealing with unspeakable grief by retreating into a shell that he peeked out from for a few moments during a long game of Chinese checkers that ended in a draw.

The earthquake has not stopped the survivors housed at the refugee shelter from celebrating the Dragon Boat Festival holiday. Zongzi (glutinous rice wrapped in bamboo leaves) from the Loving Heart Cafeteria appear and are pressed into our hands as we walk. Psychologist Dan Zhang gives a few t-shirts to one family, who has decorated its small living space with curtains and laid down vinyl flooring so they can take their shoes off outside the room in the traditional way, and those small gifts unleash a deluge of gift-giving by this family that has lost their home. They give us umbrellas and when I mention that I am thankful because I forgot a hat to protect my pink skin from the sun they try to give me sunscreen, which I already have, and they give us salted duck eggs, another delicacy traditionally eaten on this holiday.

We encounter a man concerned about his yellow-beaked bird who, since the earthquake, hops nervously around her cage and seems to have forgotten how to make noise of any kind let alone sing: “We must be patient,” says the man.

But underlying the patience and the resilience of this gracious and generous community of survivors, hunkering down for what many expect will be a long stay until permanent housing is built, is anxiety about how long the world will pay attention.

One mom is worried about her 18 month old daughter, who was buried in the rubble with her grandfather for two hours. Before the earthquake her daughter was friendly to everyone. Now she won’t let anyone touch her except for her family. “What can I do?” When the staff tells her about the new preschool in Half the Sky’s Big Top Children’s Center she asks “How long will you be here?” She is relieved when our staff tells her that many people around the world want to provide help for the long haul.

Like the man who is patiently waiting for his bird to sing, Half the Sky will be patient, working in the hard-hit towns of Sichuan for as long as there are children who need help.

Dear Friends,

It was a Children’s Day with not enough children

Here in Sichuan, Sunday was filled with both sadness and hope. For those parents who lost their only child, it was a day of immeasurable anguish. For those families still whole or partially intact, it was a time of sad resolve to get on with the task of rebuilding their lives and the lives of their children. For children who survived but lost a parent, schoolmates, teachers, home, the holiday toys and candies were small comfort. Still, life goes on and the children will slowly begin to heal. They will need help.

It is now reported that 7,000 children died on May 12.

But many, many thousands more survived. Thankfully, the numbers truly orphaned are much fewer than first believed.

Yesterday, the Ministry of Civil Affairs told us that 420 children are confirmed orphaned. The government continues to search for living relatives of another 1072. Those numbers, though, represent only a small portion of the many thousands of children who need help.

Children who have lost one parent. Children grieving for their lost parents even as they have been reunited with their grandparents or other extended family. The estimated 16,000 children who were injured during the quakes. And countless others children who are struggling to deal emotionally with the horror they have experienced. These are children whose lives were really just beginning—and now must begin again.

Thanks to your generosity, we have helped the surviving children by bringing them much-needed supplies, including supplies to the stranded children in the isolated mountains of Aba, where roads were buried under landslides, and to the children of Leigu, whose villages were threatened by flood. Our sincere thanks to everyone who helped us buy and get those supplies to the children quickly in the chaotic first days. Thanks to the amazing crew at Gung Ho Films, to the wonderful Sichuan volunteers from Silk Road Telecommunications, to our volunteer shoppers and shippers in Chengdu and around China, and to our extraordinary donors who provided the funds that enabled us to act so quickly to get the supplies to the children.

Now that we have completed that first phase of our earthquake relief effort, it is time for Half the Sky to help the youngest survivors begin to heal emotionally. Though we have never provided emotional support for children in the wake of a natural disaster, we have, over the last decade provided that support for 15,000 children living in social welfare institutions who have lost their families - delivering such care is the essence of Half the Sky.

In preparation for our first workshop with the US National Center for School Crisis and Bereavement, our field staff spent last week observing and interacting with children living in temporary shelters and welfare institutions. While the world is rejoicing that they survived, many of these children are mourning the friends and family members who did not and wondering why they are the “lucky” ones. Others are in shock, unable to face the pain of loss of those they depended on most.

At a shelter in Chengdu, one middle schooler who was evacuated from Wenchuan told our team:

“The first floor of the school disappeared. The second floor became the first floor. Our teachers were too busy helping us to have time for their own children. We carried two injured students from the collapsed building to a tent on a mountain top. We stayed in the mountains after that and lived on potatoes that weren’t ripe and shared 2-3 bottles of water among more than 60 of us every day. Later, two students died in the tent. It rained and rained. We knew there could be landslides because we knew a big aftershock could happen at any time, but we didn’t know what to fear any more.”

At at the Sichuan Children’s Activity Center west of Chengdu, our team learned about a boy who feels guilty that he was not able to save the girl that sat next to him in class. When the building was about to collapse, the boy managed to run out of the building. Some of his classmates were not so lucky and he tried pulling out his classmate whose leg was stuck in the rubble. Unfortunately he did not succeed and the girl later died. Now he feels guilty that he could not save his friend and talks about it over and over.

And our staff filed this heartbreaking report from the Zitong Children’s Welfare Institute:

“A boy arrived at the institution with a bandage on one side of his head.The staff gave him a name and estimated that he is two years old. Every time the institution gate opens he runs to it and says “baba,”“mama,” the only words he knows. The expression of his face is one of sadness and fear without security. There was no smile on this face during the whole time we were there.”

On Monday, in cooperation with the MCA and the National Center for School Crisis and Bereavement, we held our first Sichuan Caregiver Traing Project workshop at the Chengdu CWI, a milestone on that long road toward bringing emotional relief to the children. While we tried to keep the first workshop small, because we knew that we needed to have time and interactive discussion in order to make plans for the next steps, it was not possible. The need for caregiver support is just too great. By the workshop’s second day, we included 90 volunteers who’d been working in shelters as well as administrators from the two largest shelters in Chengdu. There will be no shortage of trainees as our field staff and experts head out into hard-hit areas today.

The questions from caregivers and volunteers were challenging. Do we try to gently tell the children who cling to the hope that their parents are alive that they are instead likely dead? How do we reach children who have shut down, refusing to talk about what they went through yet screaming in the night from memories too horrible to consider during the day? How can we help a child who won’t eat, a child who lives in her imagination? Do we let them see us cry? How do we keep our own sanity as we try to be there for the children? Sadly, the experts in child trauma during disaster have heard the questions and have seen the suffering many times before. They were able to provide tools for caregivers and for children, as well as reassurance that they will be there to help as the healing process begins.

Yesterday, after the workshop, we visited a shelter in Chengdu. Children told us of seeing their friends killed, of waking up next to dead bodies, of their fear of falling asleep, their fear of being indoors.

We know that with this workshop our new work is just beginning….we have pledged to work with other organizations and with government to help the children in Sichuan for as long as help is needed. There is no question that this will be a long process and that we will need the help of all of you, who have already given so much.

We know you want to help because our mailboxes are full of offers of tents, blankets, diapers, and strong backs to help rebuild. These are wonderful offers but we cannot accept them now that we have moved on to the work of helping children to heal emotionally.

What we do need is financial support and your trust that we are exploring and will develop and carry out a plan for maximum impact on children’s lives. In turn, we commit to report in detail, and often, how we are using the resources you are so generously supplying. By the end of this week, we expect to be able to report more fully on our midterm and longterm plans in Sichuan. We anticipate that the work may last for 2-3 years. As the emergency eases, we will make certain that Half the Sky’s direct involvement will be limited, as it must, by our mission (providing nurturing care for orphaned children) but we will do our best to facilitate involvement of other organizations that can help meet the needs of affected children in the broader population.

Every year, in June, we launch a Children’s Day campaign to raise funds to bring Half the Sky’s programs to more children in the fall. This year we must do even more. We have to help these children even as we continue to run our programs and open new, comprehensive Blue Sky Model Centers. Never have we needed your help more.

Of the US$600,000 you have so generously committed to help the children of Sichuan, we have spent approximately one-half on emergency relief. We should have a full accounting very soon. We do not yet know what the cost of our long-term effort to rebuild lives will be, but hope to have more information as the plans develop and the numbers of children in need of emotional assistance are clearer.

If you would like to donate to Half the Sky’s Children’s Earthquake Fund you can do so by calling Half the Sky (+1-510-525-3377) or visit our website: http://give.halfthesky.org/prostores/servlet/Categories?category=Children’s+Earthquake+Fund

If you would like a Canadian tax receipt, please donate athttp://www.canadahelps.org/CharityProfilePage.aspx?CharityID=s86248

If you would like a Hong Kong tax receipt, please call Half the Sky – Asia (+852-2520-5266) or donate online at https://www.paydollar.com/b2c2/eng/charity/payInfo.jsp?charityId=4947

If you’d like to view previous earthquake journal entries:http://www.halfthesky.org/journal/

Thank you!

with love,

Jenny

Ps – For our many new friends - Half the Sky is a global NGO that establishes and operates programs that provide emotional and educational support for orphaned children living in 38 government-run social welfare institutions in China.

Half the Sky does not operate orphanages. It is not an adoption agency. We exist for China’s children.