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May, 2001 | |
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Dear Sponsors, Amity staff traveled to Jiangxi province late March through early April and visited ten of the orphanages that we are sending support to! The orphanages visited were Guixi, Jiujiang, Leping, Fuzhou (Linchuan), Nanchang, Shangrao, Wanzai, Xinyu, Yingtan and Yujiang. Dr. Hong is now overseeing the Hugging Grannies and the medical projects while a new staff member, Ms. Qiu, will oversee the foster care and school projects. The number of children we're able to help continues to grow and it's very exciting to hear about Amity's visit. We hope you'll visit this web site often. I think you'll really enjoy the photos of some of our Hugging Grannies and you'll also find photos of the children in need of medical care. And be sure to tell your family and friends about the new web site. Our opportunities to help more children continues to expand and we'd love to hear from more people interested in helping. There are some flyers that can be printed from the web site about the different projects. Please print as many of these as you'd like and distribute them to any groups or individuals that you think might be interested. You can find these in the "About Altrusa" section under "Download Information".
Foster Care: Our foster care program continues to expand. We added 16 children from the Fuzhou (Linchuan) orphanage to our sponsorship. These children are all hepatitis B positive so their chances of being adopted are lower. But with our support they will have a long term loving foster family of their own with periodic visits by the Amity staff to ensure a high standard of care. With the addition of these Fuzhou (Linchuan) children we are now sponsoring foster care in nine of the Jiangxi orphanages. Ms. Qiu went to eight of these nine orphanages during the recent trip. She visited a total of 154 foster homes! Her observation was that "living a good, normal family life under the care and love of of the foster parents has led to great improvements in the physical, mental and psychological development of the children." She also reviewed with the orphanage staff the file for each of the foster children and made sure that Amity's regulations for foster care were being followed and reviewed with them the reporting requirements. At least two thirds of the foster children have mild disabilities and the individualized attention they can receive in a foster home is very beneficial. In her report Ms. Qiu highlighted five of these special needs children, showing how they have blossomed with their foster care families. See the "Field Visit Report" on this web site for their stories and photos. The orphanage directors at Shangrao and Gao'an have asked for foster care sponsorship at their orphanages and the ones at Nanchang, Yingtan, Xinyu and Fuzhou (Linchuan) would like to expand their programs. Amity would like to concentrate on children with mild disabilities around age of 2 to 5 and infants who need special care so we are waiting for the information on these children and the potential new foster homes. We will then have quite a few children in need of a sponsor, so let me know if you're interested. I'd love to have a list of sponsors ready to go once we have these children placed. For those interested in helping to support foster care but not able to afford the entire cost there are group sponsorships available. For $78 a year you can share support with some others. Photos and updates on the children under group sponsorships are posted at http://www.chinamoms.org/amity/.
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Hugging Grannies: These hard working women continue to touch the lives of many orphanage children. We have photos of some of them, along with some information and quotes on this site. Three new Grandmas have been started at the Ganzhou orphanage and two at the orphanage in Ruijin, bringing our current total to 23 Grandmas! We still plan to add the two at Yingtan and two at Xinyu but for some reason it is taking the orphanage staff quite some time to find appropriate candidates. We'd also like to begin some Grandmas at the Fuzhou (Linchuan) and Shangrao orphanages. This is a wonderful program that can make a huge difference to those children in the orphanages that we're not able to get into foster care. These woman are very dedicated to the children and help to give extra love and attention that the overworked orphanage staff is often not able to provide. They also focus on the developmental needs of the children which can be easily overlooked when even basic needs such feeding and diapering stretch available orphanage resources. But, support for this program is not always easy to come by, as sponsors don't get a photo of a specific child like they do with the foster care, schooling and medical projects. Support is still needed for some of the new Grandmas. And support for the ongoing Grandmas is also dwindling. Several had been supported by the Emma Lee Minkin Memorial Fund which is almost depleted. Donations of any amount are much appreciated. And we'd love to have you print out the flyer about the Hugging Grannies (see second paragraph of this update) and spread the news to as many people as possible. Please help us keep this project alive and active. |
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"Grandma Tang, a retired special education teacher, was teaching a song to children when we entered the children's room. The children sang a song for us while we were there. Grandma Tang and the other Grandmas think of interesting ways to teach the children; combining joy and learning, entertainment and knowledge. |
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School Tuitions:
The number of children and the number of orphanages participating in this project have also increased. Several of the schoolchildren were adopted during the year but this spring we have 125 children from fourteen different orphanages receiving sponsorship for their school tuitions. By now each sponsor should have received at least a photo of the child that they're sponsoring for the 2000-2001 school year. I do have some volunteers helping me to distribute the updates, photos, school reports and letters so please notify me if you haven't received anything this year. The kindergarteners don't have a school report and usually don't write letters (a few have sent drawings) so for these children you may have only received a photo. The amount of information we've received on the older children has varied between orphanages but some of you have received a report twice during the school year. With your support, and during Amity's visits, these children receive encouragement to stay in school and study hard. This is so important, not only in regard to their future ability to live independently from the Welfare Institute, but also to live up to their potential and find fulfillment and happiness in their adult lives. Your support really does make a difference to these older orphanage children. Peggy Gurrad will be assisting me with the School Tuition project for the 2001-2002 school year and hopefully for years to come. I will still receive the donations through Altrusa and send the funds to Amity but she will coordinate the rest of the project. She has an excellent background for this work (read more about her in the "Meet Our Volunteers" section of "About Altrusa" at the website) and the time and resources to manage it during her work as an university librarian. Her daughter was in our Amity sponsored foster care program prior to her adoption so Peggy is excited about this opportunity to contribute. We hope to get the information to you by August about which children are continuing on in school and about any new children needing sponsorship.
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Medical Needs: As we expand our foster care (now 165 children) and school tuition programs to more children and more orphanages the number of children with medical needs that Amity becomes aware of increases. With each trip to Jiangxi province made by Amity more medical needs come to light. Some of the needs are minor and not expensive to correct but others are much more expensive, such as some of the orthopedic surgeries and especially the open heart surgeries. Our medical fund has a difficult time keeping with these needs so this is another area in which your help in finding interested sponsors would be much appreciated. From Amity's December visit we became aware of several children in need of open heart surgery. You can view these children and read a bit about them in the "Current Projects - Heart Surgery Fund" section of this site. Unfortunately "Katie", the little girl from Jiujiang whose heart surgery many of you sent support for, died in spite of receiving an initial heart surgery. Plans had been made for her to have a second heart surgery so the funds raised for her care will go towards these other needed heart surgeries. These other children have much more common types of heart disease that are easier to correct but surgery is still badly needed. Some additional funds have been raised for them but quite a bit is still coming from our General Medical Fund. So donations for the heart surgeries are still welcome so the General Medical Fund can help some of the other children in need. Or if any of you would like to fund a specific child's surgery that would also be much appreciated. In addition to the heart surgeries the following are the current medical needs we're trying to raise support for: Guixi: Two girls recently receiving surgery for club feet now need corrective shoes, cost is $259 each child. Jiujiang: A child needs surgery for a cleft lip, probably around $500 Leping: A thirteen year old boy has been hospitalized due to his kidney disease and needs medical treatment, cost $648. Fuzhou (Linchuan): Physical exams for eight children with disabilities and one child needs surgery for deformity of the genitals. Cost not yet reported. Nanchang: A girl born April 2000 needs surgery for hip dislocation, $130. A girl born Oct. 2000 needs surgery for club feet, $259. And one of our foster children, HXB, a girl born in 1996 needs surgery for club feet, cost $259. Shang Rao: Two of our schoolchildren need surgery. RJH, a girl born Oct. 1993, needs surgery for a deformity of the genitals, cost $518 and RXM, a girl born Jul. 1993 needs cleft palate surgery, cost $518 Wanzai: A child born in Feb, 2001 needs surgery to remove a hemangioma on the right arm, cost not yet reported. Yu Jiang: A boy born April 2000 needs surgery for "extra flesh in the nose", cost $130 and a 23 yr old girl who was in an accident five years ago and injured her spine needs further medical exams and a wheelchair, cost not yet reported. Photos of several of these children are posted in the "Orphanage Requests" section of this site. It's overwhelming to think of the number of children that have been helped through our Amity sponsorship and it is due to each of you that this has been possible. Thank you so very much! But there are many more children that could benefit from our assistance. If you'd like to send further donations the check should be made out to Altrusa Foundation (tax deductible) and mailed to: Altrusa Foundation If you have any questions please e-mail me. Thank you again for all of your support!! Sincerely,
Peggy Gurrad
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