Report of the Field Visit to Guixi Orphanage

April 5, 2002 by Dr. Peggy Gurrad
We met with Director Wang first and talked about the orphanage and the Amity projects there.

The Guixi Social Welfare Institute serves both children and the elderly.  There are 24 staff members.
   
  There are approximately 70 children; 14 are students and most of the others are less than one year of age.  There are also 14 handicapped children.

Amity sponsors 20 children in foster care.  This includes some of the handicapped children and the orphanage sponsors an additional 17 healthy children in foster care.  Amity started working with the Guixi orphanage in 1999 and in addition to foster care we now also sponsor Hugging Grannies, school tuitions and medical needs.  
   
  The director appreciates this support and mentioned being grateful for the medical sponsorship so that children could get their surgeries “on time”.  We were shown the medical clinic that we helped to supply.

She is also thankful that through the school sponsorships students can go on to further study, we currently have two Guixi students in junior college.   
   
  She mentioned that some of the students have corresponded with their sponsor from the US.  One student that likes to draw even received a package from their sponsor with drawing supplies.  The director mentioned the play equipment that had been purchased as a memorial to an adoptive mom and the plaque that was sent honoring her.  

There are four Hugging Grannies at Guixi.  In addition to working with the infants and the staff they also work with the handicapped and older children.  
   
  The handicapped children in foster care come to the orphanage on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays to receive rehab exercises from the Grannies (one is a retired doctor).  They help the cleft lip/palate children with their speech and pronunciation.  

On Tuesdays and Thursdays the students come to the orphanage and the Grannies help them with their homework and review their lessons, two of the Grannies are retired teachers.   

   
  Director Wang mentioned that the handicapped children have especially benefited from the combination of medical sponsorship and assistance from the Grannies.  The collaboration of Amity and their “overseas friends” with the orphanage is much appreciated.

Later the Grannies followed us to the school so that they could talk more with Amity’s Dr. Hong.  She’s in charge of the Grannies program and they were very excited to tell her about all the progress the children are making.

   
  Several of our sponsored foster children were brought to the orphanage by their foster moms to meet us, many with disabilities and those that had surgeries sponsored by us.  We saw them in the playroom.  Several had cleft surgeries and one had surgery on a clubfoot.

One child had meningitis/encephalitis and we paid for her hospitalization.  She has now recovered and happily returned to her foster home.  She comes in three times a week for rehab exercises and attention from the Grannies, including help in learning to speak.
   
  We were shown another room with some small desks and chairs for the children.  Along one wall were several large poster boards with the photos that adoptive parents have sent back to the orphanage staff.  

Next we visited the infant rooms.  The first two smaller rooms had four babies per crib and one caregiver with a twin bed next to the cribs.  The larger room at the end of the hall had several cribs.  The rooms were clean and the children appeared well cared for and adequately nourished.   

   
  One child that we had been sponsoring in foster care, GXL, was back at the orphanage because she was to be adopted soon.  We gave her the gift her foster sponsor had sent. 

One cute toddler had pigtails with fancy ponytail holders and was obviously very close to the caregiver, she had been living at the orphanage since arriving as an infant.  The orphanage doctor made an appearance, one of the infants has heart disease but he feels the defect may close with time and surgery may not be needed.

   
  We then went to the junior middle school where we sponsor eight students.  They live at the school during the week and return to the orphanage on the weekends.  We caused quite a commotion; hopefully the children liked the experience of being important enough to be visited by foreigners.  

Because we were so distracting to the other students we went to a conference room and met with the students there.  Each student said a few sentences thanking us for our sponsorship; a few were able to say it in English.   
   
  The schoolmaster is interested in maintaining a correspondence with us and gave me his business card with address and wrote down mine.  Hopefully this will be a way to get some better correspondence going between these students and their sponsoring families.  Two of these students do need additional medical assistance.  GZ, a bilateral amputee, needs a new (larger) prosthesis and the student with a clubfoot needs an orthopedic shoe.  She has had surgery but one leg is longer than the other.  
   

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