One of the first things expectant parents often do is begin thinking about a nursery and how to decorate and furnish it. A beautiful room complete with changing table, toys, and a beautiful crib may be waiting for that precious baby when he or she arrives.
Of course newly arrived children at an orphanage don’t get met with this same scenario. Read more.
While we wish we could post the photo of every child we helped in 2012, we hope you will enjoy this much shorter snapshot of some of the joys of this last year!
In January, we celebrated our Unity Fund, which works to heal poor, rural children so that families can stay together. HeQing’s father had no financial means to heal his precious daughter’s heart, and we are so grateful to our donors who gave her this second chance at a healthy life. As you can see, her smile absolutely lit up the hospital ward! Read more.
LWB has been asked to do a very special project for a rural, mountainous village in southwest Guizhou Province. ChaYing village, home to a Buyi ethnic minority group, is one of the poorest villages in Guizhou. We have been asked if it would be possible for us to provide a new coat and warm thermal underwear to every child in the village. There are 105 children who currently live in Chaying.. Read more.
LWB has previously provided the Linyi SWI three posterior walkers for their children with cerebral palsy. Our China Orphanage Assistance Program’s Director recently received a call from the orphanage asking about the possibility of receiving more walkers. They said the walkers we sent work extremely well for kids with cerebral palsy or other walking issues.
Hudson smiled his way into our hearts in April 2010 when we were notified after he arrived at the orphanage very sick with pneumonia. He was hospitalized and treated for the pneumonia, but the doctors discovered he had a heart defect known as PDA (patent ductus arteriosus). Despite his illness, Hudson always had a beautiful smile on his face for the camera.
As soon as Hudson was strong enough, he was moved to the hospital to have his heart repaired. Read more.
LWB’s Orphanage Assistance Program has evolved over the years and is the parent program to LWB’s Nutrition Program program. Did you know that nutrition was actually the first program we began in China…even before Kang’s heart surgery? When Amy Eldridge first visited an orphanage in 2003, she wrote about how hard it was to see the toddlers eating just a tiny bowl of rice, and how they scraped down the sides to get every grain because they were so hungry. As she left that day, she pressed $300 into the hands of a trusted doctor and told him to buy the kids additional food. Read more.
About a year after adopting an older girl from the Lishui orphanage in 2008, Suzanne Damstedt began as LWB’s Orphanage Assistance Director. One of her first projects was helping this orphanage, which had not previously been helped by LWB. She shared the project with a small Yahoo group of Lishui adoptive families, and, with generous support from the group, 100 sets of baby clothes, over 100 bags of cloth diapers, and physical therapy supplies were provided to the orphanage.
In addition to the items provided, Zane (wearing blue in the front row in the photo above) was seen by our medical program director and later received heart surgery. We are still hoping he will have a chance at adoption. In fact, he is one of four children for whom LWB provides adoption assistance grants! Read more.
LWB’s Orphanage Assistance program has a remarkable story to share with you this month. A special lady named Ashley, who is waiting to go to China to adopt her daughter from an orphanage in the Guangdong province, wanted to do something to help out her daughter’s orphanage. She set out to fundraise enough to buy an incubator for the orphanage to benefit children born prematurely. She got some of her artist friends to design prints to be emailed to donors and then posted these prints and information about the fundraiser on her blog. Read more.
Over the holidays, we had a call from an orphanage who had been sent a care package from a kind and well-meaning adoptive parent. Unfortunately the package had been stuck in customs, and since there were multiple items inside the parcel, the customs agent was insisting on charging the orphanage a $60 fee to pick it up. The orphanage staff had to go into the city several times to fill out paperwork before the package could be released, which took quite a bit of their time as well. Once we had worked out the details of this last package, the orphanage director suggested that while they appreciate the good intentions, perhaps we could let adoptive parents know that packages often cost them precious money and time to pick up, depending on each city’s customs rules.
We know everyone sends packages with such good and kind intentions, but we felt it was important to point out some of the issues that can arise when a package is mailed to an orphanage in China. One orphanage was once hit with a $125 customs fee for a large box that a parent had sent. Read more.
When we first saw this photo, we laughed out loud as little Guang looks like he is firmly placing the blame on someone else. As part of our orphanage assistance program, families can send baby formula to their child’s orphanage as a gift, and this photo was taken shortly after a shipment had arrived in Xinyang. We are so happy that Guang was adopted this year, and we have heard the great news that his family is completely in love! Read more.
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