Meeting Goals for the Year Ahead; a Trip to Luo Yang

I got up early this morning to get my daughter Lian ready for her daycare, because I needed to be ready for our board meeting by 8:00 am. After sending her to the bus, I dialed in through the IP phone in my office to St. Louis.

There, our CHI board members from St. Louis, Georgia, and New York got connected. Besides the normal business we generally talk about at this meeting, we also spoke about our goals. My goal for Children’s Hope Foundation in China is to help 1,000 children receive surgeries, help 2,000 orphans for education and mental health services, with a total of $1 million donations generated on behalf of Children's Hope for 2008.

So far, we are 200 children away from our 500 surgeries goal for 2007, but we have plans to work with CBN and other organization to reach that goal soon. We have also received over $500,000 donations on behalf of Children's Hope from inside China. I am very confident we will reach our goal for 2008.

Tomorrow, Lian and Angela received an invitation from their friends Julia and Sasha for Trick R Treat at our friend Tania’s neighborhood. After that, I need to take a night train to go to Luo Yang, for an opening ceremony at the People‘s Hospital, Children's Hope joint project to help more children in need of heart surgeries in Hebei province. I have not prepared for the speech as of now. Jian Ying and I will talk all night on the train, I am sure. I will some back the next day so I will not miss my babies too much this time.

A Night with the Stars and the Dandelions for 500 Children

What a fun night we had with Sarah and her supporters tonight! Sarah is the US Ambassador to China, Clark T Randt’s, wife. What I love about her most is her heart for Chinese children. Tonight, she and ten of her friends held a banquet to raise funds for Dandelion School for Migrant Children in Beijing. They sold out all 23 tables at 10,000 RMB each. She had famous movie stars, singers and a lot of business professionals in attendance, as well as her husband, the Ambassador.

At the end, I took the picture of the children (who were very happy obviously!). There are 500 children in the Dandelion School. At the party, they received offers for future uniforms, 10,000 books and all the money received from the ticket sales and the extra donations.

I sent my email to Sarah today, thanking her for doing this for 500 Chinese children. I will meet with her next month for lunch and ask her to attend our fundraiser in November for orphan sponsorship.


Pictured: (above left) Melody Zhang with fundraiser Sarah Randt, (above right) A few of the very happy children of the Dandelion School for Migrant Children, (below left) Melody with US Ambassador to China, Clark T Randt, (below right) Melody with famous actor Jiang Wen.

We signed the lease!

Today I went to our new foster home site with the designers from Robart Interior and Architect. I signed the lease with Mr. Tian Xiao Yong, the owner of RenAi Elderly Home! The lease is for three years. I wish it could be for a longer term but due to some restrictions, we can only sign for three years for now. We hope we can rent the other two apartments on the same floor next year so we will occupy the first floor of this building. Doing so will give us the space to foster 80 children.

I visited the children after the signing. The three new babies from Tian Jin this month seem to be doing very well. Little Shen Zhi Kuai learned to give kisses in the last two weeks!

(The top photo is of me with four babies from our foster home. The bottom photo is of the new site for our Home for Children's Hope!)

CHI Foster Home May Find Its Own New Home

Our foster home, Home of Children’s Hope (HCH) is our favorite place. Visiting the lovely babies there reminds us of what we are all about. It is located northeast of Beijing, near the Beijing Capital International Airport. Currently we have two two-story houses in Maquanying, a small farming community. Unique in its proximity to Beijing, Maquanying is only 20 minutes from the downtown area but is surrounded by a rich community of single houses. (Our "old" Home of Children's Hope is pictured on the left.) Currently Children's Hope holds 10 children in one foster care house and an additional 10 children suffering from cerebral palsy, and their ten caretakers and their therapist, in the second rehabilitation house. Everyday, one of our CHI office staff visits the foster home and helps with the web site, volunteer communications, and whatever else they can help accomplish. A group of 10 volunteers, mostly expatriate wives living in the area, also visits and plays with the children.

As the lease on one of the buildings expires, we began thinking of moving into a bigger place. It’s extremely hard to find suitable places in Beijing with a reasonable rent. We needed either to move to a far away suburb, or pay high rent for a smaller place. The real estate price skyrocketed in the last several years, and as it is not my area of expertise, I started getting headaches just thinking about it!

Luckily, the owners of an elderly home three minutes from our location found us and offered one of their buildings. Once the owners learned of Children's Hope work, they lowered the rent 35%, as they want to help with orphan's work as much as possible. We will be renting their four bedroom apartment and will possibly rent an additional two apartments on the same floor when those leases also become available next year.

Good friends of mine, Karyn and Adam Robart, who together run a very successful design firm, agreed to design and remodel these apartments for us, and possibly donate their service as well.

In a few days, we will sign the contract and start the ball rolling.

Please keep this building project of HCH in your prayers!

590 New Applications for Heart and Cleft Surgeries

On October 11-14, I was visiting Qing Hai. QingHai is the fourth largest province in China in terms of the area, but is the second poorest province in China. There are only 5 million people (one third of the population of the city of Beijing) in the total province and there are about 3,000 orphans.

The annual income in this province is about 800 Yuan, equal to $110 per person. In the past two years, we have worked with the association of social work in Qing Hai helping over one hundred children in poor families receive surgeries. Mr. La, our colleague there brought us another 482 applications for children in need of heart surgeries and 102 applications for those in need of cleft surgeries, this month. We are working with at least two different groups to get the help for these children.

My friend Lisa Bentley, who is contacting her friends in the US for the cleft surgeries, came with me to visit these children and their families before our final decision. We were told since the weather is getting cold, the road to the higher mountain areas already has snow and we can only visit the children near Xining area. Xining is the capital city of Qinghai, with a population of less than one million. The only government run child welfare home is here.

We were shocked by the poverty of these families, yet, all of them have shown us nothing but appreciation for the possible surgeries their babies will receive through our help. As we learned from the past, the cleft lip and palate surgeries cost average 6,000 RMB each in the local hospital, but our coordinating hospital in Beijing charges only 4000 RMB average, and with better assurance for quality.

New Friend to Fund Heart Surgeries

2007 marks the 10th year for Good Rock Foundation. My friend Jacqui Shurr, an adoptive mom from England, began this foundation for Chinese orphans in Xin Jiang and moved her family from the UK to Hong Kong in 2004. To celebrate, she gave 500 children a summer camp this year and is now organizing a fundraiser in Hong Kong.

During my visit, I was so glad to meet Christine Mar (that's me with Christine in the photo), who is the founder for the Children’s Medical Foundation in Hong Kong. The Children's Medical Foundation offers free surgeries to orphans and poor children at their hospital in Shanghai. She told me she had over $100,000 ready to be used for the children's surgeries as of this week. They need people to apply! I told her we would submit five children's application for heart surgeries as soon as I get back.

Post Surgical Care

Last week, when I visited Teda Heart Hospital in Tianjin, I found this little 2-year-old on the bed hooked up with all kinds of tubes in the ICU. While there, the hospital staff asked us if we can provide foster care for some of the orphaned children after their surgeries. Of course, I said yes. Right away, on September 30, Shen Yang Welfare Home sent this little girl and two other orphan babies to Children's Hope foster care in Beijing. Due to the staff shortage at our foster home during the holiday week, little Shen zhi Kuai came to stay at my house for the week. Xiao Ling stayed with a Chinese family and will stay with them until her adoptive family comes. Xiao Bai went to an American foster family for a week.