Two-year-old Tate always has a smile ready when our foster care manager comes to visit his foster care program in Shantou!
This easy-going boy has lived with his foster family for over a year now, and he has become very close to them. Each day when his foster father returns from work, Tate runs to the door and greets him. Our manager reports that he is cherished by his entire foster family. Read more.
Some generous donors have stepped forward to provide a $2,000 adoption assistance grant for Ben, the 13-year-old boy recently featured on our blog (“Ben: Waiting a Decade for a Family to Call His Own“). Ben is close to aging out, and these donors want to help him find his family before it is too late. Ben’s orphanage has also agreed to waive half of the orphanage donation fee, making it just $2,500!
In addition to this good news, we also have some short videos of Ben to share. Read more.
Can you imagine waiting for ten years for a family to call your own, only to never be chosen?
Ben, who has been a student at our Shantou Believe in Me School since 2004, has watched his friends be chosen for adoption over the years. He has cheerfully maintained his role as “big brother” to the younger kids at the school all the time, never letting it alter his happy outlook on life. However, his last chance for adoption is now here. He ages out in late July 2013 when he turns 14. This breaks our hearts as we feel he could bring so much joy to a family. Read more.
Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world. ~Nelson Mandela
As the West starts to get into the routine of a new school year, so do the children in our Believe in Me schools in China. The LWB Education team is proud to welcome back all of our amazing teachers and students for the 2012 – 2013 school year. With over 300 students in our schools, we are a very busy program and are extremely excited about what this school year will hold for our precious and amazing children! Welcome back….
Changde Believe in Me School
A few months ago LWB’s Orphanage Assistance Program began working with the Shantou SWI to set up a special physical therapy training for the workers at the orphanage. A teacher from Hong Kong came to the orphanage to conduct this training for the orphanage staff. The staff reported that they learned a lot and felt the things learned would be helpful to the children for whom they care.
The staff was instructed in several hands-on approaches, including massage, speech therapy, and games to help the children. In the past they had been taught about PT skills separately and often on only a theoretical level. The teacher asked, “Does a baby learn to cry first, or shake its hands first, or shake its legs first?” Of course babies learn all these things at the same time. Likewise, the teacher asserted, PT skills should be taught to the children in conjunction with multiple skills at the same time, rather than on an isolated basis. Read more.
There is something about traveling at 556 mph and 33,000 ft. above the earth that always makes me reflect on the past. A similar flight occurred just over eight years ago, and I was nervous then as I’m nervous now. At that time, I was yet to be a dad, but that was all about to change. I had just kissed goodbye my very pregnant wife so that I could bring back our twelve-month-old daughter waiting for us in China. Read more.
Returning to the Shantou orphanage is always like coming home to me. I have been visiting this orphanage for over nine years, and two of my children spent the beginning of their lives in this facility. This trip was especially poignant to me as the word “changes” kept swirling through my head. There are so many changes in China each year, both wonderful and somber, and my heart felt split in two as it soared with joy at moments but then also crumbled at the increasingly complex needs. Everyone with a heart for the orphaned has to face the reality that almost every child abandoned now has a medical need, and so the issues the nannies face are often immense. The days of orphanages being filled with healthy baby girls due to the one child policy are over, and yet that myth is still perpetuated in news articles and blogs. Read more.
LWB’s Education team is proud to introduce you to this handsome young man, Birch, a four-year-old boy in our Believe in Me Shantou school. This precious young boy has epilepsy, but he does not let that get him down. He has a great time at school every day!
In the classroom Birch likes to stay busy. His teachers have told us that he loves to build and that he will use nearly any toy they give him to try to build something. Perhaps this sweet child will grow up to be an architect! Read more.
If you read our blog last week, you may remember a story about Brandon, who had just received surgery for droopy eyelids and was waiting for new glasses. Well, we wanted to share this photo to show everyone how handsome he looks in his new specs! He sure looks proud of them and is probably quite excited by how clearly he can see the world around him.
Although Brandon is no longer waiting for his glasses, he is still waiting for his forever family. We sure hope he won’t be waiting much longer!
Read more.
Patience may be a virtue…but it’s just so difficult to wait! For almost a year now, Brandon has been waiting for his forever family while living with his foster care family in our Shantou foster care program in Guangdong Province. According to his foster care reports, this sweet and lively boy enjoys a good game of hide-and-seek with his little friends and staying close beside his foster mom (seen below) as she goes about the day’s housework. Like many three-year-olds, he loves to “help” with the daily chores and is said to be extremely observant.
Read more.
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