We Reached Our Children’s Day Goal!
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!
Just a few days ago, two new HTS foster village projects (in Shenzhen and in Nanning) opened their doors, giving permanent homes and forever families to 60 children with special needs.
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.
And next month two more brave spirits set off on an incredible journey in support of HTS. Joe Ryan and Nathan Taylor, both from the UK and currently living in Japan, will bike from the northern tip of China to its southern most point while collecting donations for HTS’ center at the Sanya Social Welfare Institute. The pair’s goal is to raise enough money to pay all of the operating costs for Half the Sky’s programs in Sanya for at least two years. The pedaling pair’s motto is: 1 country, 1.2 billion people, 10 provinces, 23 cities, 2 friends, 2 bikes & 1 orphanage. To learn more and to follow Joe and Nathan’s progress across China visit China by Bicycle
Here’s a small note to our wonderful child and nanny sponsors: If you receive your progress reports by email (and help us save costs by doing so!) please make sure to add reports@halfthesky.org to your address book.That way those precious quarterly reports won’t be zapped by your spam-blocking software.
That’s my news. Watch for the Summer/Fall newsletter in your postal mailbox sometime next month. And on behalf of the children, thank you again for helping us to meet the Children’s Day Challenge. Happy Summer!
