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April, 2000 | |
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Dear Sponsors, Two of Amity's volunteer staff, Dr. Hong and Ms. Qiu, visited some of the orphanages we are assisting in Jiangxi in late February and early March. I'd like to give you an update based on the report they sent me after their visit and on some of our subsequent correspondence. Nanchang Foster Care Projects: They visited 25 foster children and their families among the 44 we're sponsoring, including the thirteen most recently started in foster care (so they were new foster homes). They found most of the children are receiving good care, are loved by their foster families and have good motor and speech development. They did change just a few of the foster families because they weren't satisfied with them. Several foster children have been adopted and the foster families were given new children to foster. As required by Amity, the orphanage person in charge of this foster care project visited the homes regularly each month. The children are also taken to the orphanage by the parents regularly in order to get a health check once a month. Nanchang Grandmas: They met with all eight Grandmas in Nanchang. They are divided to work in six different children's rooms. Grandma Tang and Grandma Yu, who are working in the physically challenged/ill toddler's room, decorated the walls with many beautiful and interesting hand-works and pictures they made. They are helping the children's physical and mental development and cognitive abilities through singing and different games. Another two Grandmas named Qiu and Zhang worked very hard every day in the physically challenged/ill infants' room, trying to save the lives of the severely ill babies, "preventing their red-hips and bedsores". For example, a child, age 2, suffers from congenital heart disease and an infant girl, age 1, was extremely thin with malnutrition. The two Grandmas gave special attention and care to them (even brought special food for them from home) and they have made significant gains. In the other four rooms with one Grandma in each (rooms with healthy toddler and pre-schoolers), there have also been improvements in the care of the children, but not as much as in the above two rooms where there are two grandmas in each. Therefore, the Director of Nanchang asked for two additional Grandmas to work with these healthy children. Nanchang Students: There are 11 students who are going to public schools and are sponsored by Amity now. Among them, the two polio students have managed to go to school every day with crutches. Previously their schooling was sponsored through Amity by a group called Childhood Friends but Childhood Friends has asked us to take over their support. So if you or anyone you know might be interested in sponsoring the school fees for one of these older orphans please let me know. Requests for the Nanchang Orphanage: 2 more Amity's Grandmas
to another two children's rooms. Many children in the
rooms where there are no Amity's grandmas are still sitting in the small
potty chairs most of the time. They
suggest each child needs to have a little chair to sit in: Need to put up
sterilizing-lamps in the babies' rooms to prevent epidemics: Jiujiang Foster Care: The second ten foster children have been placed into families and were visited by the Amity staff. Among them there are three physically challenged children, including a girl with polio, a boy with a cataract and the deaf boy who's sponsored to go to the local deaf school. The physically challenged children have a much better life in the foster homes with more care and love. Assistant Director Yu and Zhang Bin Lin, a woman who just attended the four month training program run by Amity and Nanjing Special Education School, are both in charge of visiting each foster family twice a month. Amity was pleased with the foster families and the care they're giving the children. Jiujiang Grandmas: Currently the four Grandmas are all working in the babies' rooms. It seemed the number of children increased a lot since winter. Now there are 108 children in Jiujiang, 20 in foster care and the rest are in the orphanage. During the winter about 40 infants developed pneumonia so the Grandmas took part in giving intensive care to the sick babies and helped a lot. The Grandmas told Amity that the children didn't have enough winter clothes so most of the time they had to be kept in their cribs. They would like some money to buy more warm clothing and would also like to add two more Grandmas. We've asked that these two new Grandmas have a medical background. Requests for the Jiujiang Orphanage: Winter clothes for
little children: An incubator is badly
needed to save the newborn infants' lives: Sterilizing lamps for
the children's rooms: Food-grinder for
babies' food: A sterilizer for
children's dishes: Guixi Orphanage: This is an orphanage that we just started supporting last fall. In November we had visited the ten foster children and homes that we were sponsoring at that time. Since then we've added sponsorship for another ten children in foster care and Amity visited these ten new homes. In their words, "the homes looked nice and kind and were taking good care of the children." They also examined three children in need of medical help. (One of our Guixi foster care sponsors has already agreed to meet these medical needs. A few days after she sent the donation for this she received her referral. Imagine her surprise when she found that her daughter-to-be is from Guixi! And her daughter is one of our other sponsored foster children.) And we had previously asked to sponsor four Hugging Grannies (or "Grandmas") at Guixi since we saw in November that the orphanage staff works very long hours and often aren't able to give the extra attention needed. They start in April, two are retired teachers and two are retired medical workers. There is small clinic at the orphanage but it is lacking in equipment so they requested some funding for this. This medical equipment would cost 3000 yuan or about $363 in US dollars. They have received the money we sent for the playroom equipment but haven't purchased it yet. They said they would buy it soon. Requests for the Guixi Orphanage: Medical equipment for
orphanage clinic: Yichun Orphanage: Up until now the only projects we've been sponsoring at Yichun were the schooling fees for their schoolchildren. But we had asked Amity if we could begin some other support there such as foster care or Hugging Grannies. So during this trip Amity made their first visit to the Yichun orphanage. They found that they have altogether over 50 children. Forty of them are in foster care currently and those remaining in the orphanage are nine babies younger than one year and seven physically challenged children from 4 to 14 years old. There's only one older woman ("over 50 years old") taking care of the nine babies for 24 hours a day. Amity wrote, "She works very hard and all the babies look healthy. However, she can only manage to feed them and care for other basic needs, but doesn't have time for playing or worrying about their developmental needs. We saw the children's diapers and sheets are very old and worn out and they have no effective methods to keep the babies warm enough." We've been sponsoring six children in school and Amity wrote this about them; "Among the seven children in the orphanage, six were sponsored for schooling from last fall semester. However, it's said by the orphanage that five of them can no longer go to school because of their severe challenges, they don't have a high enough IQ to reach the school's standard. It's hard for us to solve this problem, but we're thinking about finding a special education teacher who can teach these challenged children in the orphanage." Requests for the Yichun Orphanage: Two grandmas: one
working with the physically challenged children and the other one in the babies'
room: Some indoor and outdoor
toys: New clothes, quilts
& sheets and napkins for babies: Basic instruments for
the clinic (medicine cabinet, sterilizing plate, oxygen bag etc.): Wanzai: They visited 17 of the foster children's homes in Wanzai. (We are sponsoring four children in foster care at Wanzai and another group is sponsoring about 40 children.) They were told that Director Tan (from the Wanzai orphanage) and Ms. Yang from the local civil affairs office were responsible for the home visits. Every family was visited twice a month and given milk and food. And every child would come back to the orphanage to get a physical check up once every 3 months. Most of the children's development in the families were fine. However, Amity felt the orphanage still needs to improve their record keeping of the foster program. Schoolchildren: We've recently begun sponsoring 17 children at the Yujiang orphanage (one still needs a sponsor) and they should be sending photos of these children soon. Two of the orphanages, Xinyu and Shangrao, still haven't sent photos of a few of their schoolchildren but Amity has checked with them again and they should be coming as well. As mentioned above, we'd like to begin sponsorship of the schoolchildren at Nanchang. And we've also had a request from the Yingtan orphanage to begin sponsorship of their school-aged children, including one girl who is attending college. So we'll be looking for sponsors for these children as well. In summary, it's exciting to see how our sponsorship in Jiangxi province has grown, we're now sponsoring 88 children in foster care and twelve Hugging Grannies with requests for six more Grannies. We're also sponsoring many schoolchildren and have met other needs such as equipment, clothing and medical needs. But as you can imagine there are still many, many unmet needs and some of them are mentioned above. I really appreciate the support all of you have given and hope that you can see what a huge difference it has made for some of the children in Jiangxi's orphanages. THANK YOU !!!! Sincerely,
Peggy Gurrad
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