Because every child, no matter how humble her beginnings, deserves loving care, and a chance at a bright future.

LiuShan-Love for Babies

HTS Field Supervisor, Liu Shan (above right):
I started working for Half the Sky as a nanny at the Xinyang Social Welfare Institution.  Then I became the Nanny Supervisor.  Last year I became an Infant Nurture Field Supervisor and travel all over for Half the Sky.. I loved working as a nanny because I spent so much time with the babies. But my job as a field supervisor is also gratifying....

Program Quality

As Half the Sky's four programs have evolved so has our thinking about how best to ensure the continued quality of our work and its value to the children.

In the beginning, it felt like an accomplishment to create beautiful rooms, stock them with the finest developmental toys and to hire and train local teachers and retired workers in the principles of child-centered early intervention and education.

Now we understand that this is only the beginning.  We do, indeed, carefully select experienced and caring adults to operate our programs.  We provide initial training of young preschool teachers for three weeks, train the local women who will become Half the Sky Nannies for one week, and give new Family Village parents a week of specialized training in parenting post-institutionalized children.

But that's just  the start.  Next, we hire a specially-trained nanny supervisor for each site to oversee our Infant Nurture Programs and a local supervisor to look after and provide ongoing support and training for the families in our Family Village. As the new programs begin, our staff of field supervisors goes into action, taking up residence at the new site until the programs are well-established, then visiting the site regularly.  The frequency of site visits depends in large part on evaluation of the various reports that come to our Beijing office.

• We receive a quarterly progress report on every single child in our programs. 
• We receive a quarterly update letter from each of our Big Sisters.
• We receive a quarterly progress report from every family village parent and from every nanny supervisor and local supervisor. 
• We receive site visitation reports from our field supervisors.
• And we receive quarterly reports from each of our program directors. 

It sounds like a lot of reports!  But they all combine to give us a complete picture of the effectiveness of each Half the Sky program.  In addition, we provide annual workshops for our nanny supervisors and teachers and maintain an ongoing online forum for them to share their successes and challenges.

We've come a long way from the days of making gifts and hoping for the best.  It's a lot of work, but none of it is wasted effort. We can now promise with confidence that each contribution to Half the Sky is a true investment in the lives of children.

Download a presentation given at the First World Conference on Early Childhood Education for Peace, in Albacete, Spain, April 2007
In English
In Spanish