This morning as I write, typhoon winds batter Hong Kong. Yesterday there was a 6.0 quake in Sichuan and we received an urgent plea for flood relief assistance in Chuzhou. By any measure, 2008 is not turning out to be the year we imagined.

Instead of 10-year anniversary celebrations and joyous Olympics parties, we’ve had disaster upon disaster. Half the Sky has done what it had to do — we turned our attention and gave our all to children in urgent need. During this past month, even as we’ve raced to create safe havens for hundreds of displaced children traumatized by catastrophe, created programs for them and hired and trained caregivers for these new “BigTops” in Sichuan, we have somehow managed to continue smooth operations in our 37 centers across China and also further our plans to create Blue Sky model centers in four new provinces this fall.

We have managed because we have an extraordinary, truly dedicated staff. And because we have you – simply the most amazing, caring community of supporters any organization could hope to have.

Thanks to you, we raised $1.4 million US dollars to help the child victims of the Sichuan tragedy. We spent $375,000 on direct relief – food, tents, medical supplies, clothes, blankets, beds, etc. We will spend $136,000 to create, equip and operate each of our BigTop children’s activity centers for two years and additional funds over five years to provide special training for doctors, teachers and caregivers in helping grieving children to develop resilience. It’s a huge undertaking, but it is well worth it!

Just take a look at what’s happening for the children at our BigTop #1 in Qinjian Refugee Camp:  http://www.halfthesky.org/work/earthquake08-bigtop.php#part3  Five more BigTops are underway already. We hope there will eventually be 10.

Each BigTop offers a preschool and afternoon and weekend activities for school-age children: art, music, dance, sports, games. The idea is to create safe spaces for traumatized children to just be children again. Our partners at Huaxi Mental Health Centre of Sichuan University and at the National Center for School Trauma and Bereavement tell us that this is a critical first step toward healing. The children receive counseling at the BigTop but it feels incidental – they come to play and to have a place that is their own and to feel safe.

Down the long road to recovery, we hope we can further help the children of Sichuan by creating permanent community centers in the hardest-hit towns. We have learned that the healing from a disaster of this scale must go on for years, some say generations.

In this terrible year of earthquakes and snowstorms and floods, we put aside all our usual efforts to raise funds to support our programs. We even let go our annual Children’s Day Challenge, the fundraiser that traditionally pays for the creation of new HTS Children’s Centers each fall. In a year where we’re still committed to opening new Blue Sky Model Centers in four cities, this was no small sacrifice.

But ten years of bucking the odds, doing what we’re told is not possible, and watching miracles unfold in China has taught us that we can make just about anything happen if we’re determined enough and if we have this great community behind us. We will keep our promise to the children. A corporation will underwrite the costs of our new center in Qingdao. A family will sponsor the startup of our new center in Harbin. And now, one super Dad with a beloved daughter adopted from China has offered us a $75,000 challenge grant to help us make up the shortfall.

So we’re launching A DADDY’S CHALLENGE.  If you give an unrestricted gift of any size between now and the end of September, you can help us double that $75,000 gift. http://give.halfthesky.org/prostores/servlet/Categories?category=A+Daddy’s+Challenge. With one Dad’s help and yours, we can still keep our promise this fall.

You can also help by sponsoring a child in one of our new centers. Or by sponsoring a permanent loving family for children with severe special needs in our Family Village Program. Or by sponsoring training for caregivers at orphanages that have no Half the Sky center through Blue Sky Training Sponsorships. http://give.halfthesky.org/prostores/servlet/Categories?category=Annual+Sponsorships

I know this is a tough year for a lot of people, not just those of us living in disaster areas. You can help our work in non-monetary ways too. You might contribute an item to our upcoming auction or organize a fundraiser or simply help spread the word about Half the Sky and the impact we have on children’s lives.

Beyond the thousands we help in Sichuan and the hundreds of children orphaned by HIV/AIDS in Henan, Half the Sky currently serves about 4,500 orphaned children. This year we will offer the loving care of HTS’ four programs to over 700 more children living at our newest Blue Sky sites: Guiyang, Xi’an, Shenyang, Harbin and Qingdao. There are many, many ways to help HTS reach its “impossible” goal of providing a caring adult in the life of every orphaned child.

Thank you for whatever you can do and for all you’ve done already. I’ll let you know how A Daddy’s Challenge goes.

With love and gratitude,

Jenny

ps - Here’s one piece of great news: On July 4, Half the Sky became one of only a tiny handful of foreign NGOs that is officially registered by the Chinese Government. Those who work in the nonprofit world in China will know what a tremendous honor this is. We are aware of only two other foreign organizations that have been recognized in this way. We are very proud!

Hello Friends,

A little over a month after Sichuan’s May 12th earthquake, we opened Half the Sky’s first BigTop children’s activity center (with preschool, art classes and counseling) in a refugee camp in Dujiangyan, near the quake’s epicenter. In a town that has experienced so much sadness, the opening was a happy, festive occasion to welcome a new oasis for fun and support for the children and the community. On hand for the opening were city and ministry officials, child trauma experts Marleen Wong and Suh Hsiao Chen of National Center for School Trauma and Bereavement, and psychologists representing our newest partners in this important effort, the Mental Health Centre of West China Hospital at Sichuan University.

The experts offered some training for assembled volunteers and, as at every celebration worth its salt in China, a group of adorable children sang and danced for the crowd. For a brief moment, the earthquake seemed a world away.

http://www.halfthesky.org/work/earthquake08-healing.php#part2

Even before the opening the BigTop had become a magnet for children, a place where they can play and share even their most troubling earthquake experiences. A few days earlier, when the furniture was being painted, curious children arrived again at the tent and were disappointed not to be allowed in because of the paint fumes. Half the Sky staffers couldn’t bear to send the children away so they set up a table outside the tent, on the concrete platform (above the mud) where the children played with bubbles and toys.

Three little girls made themselves comfortable and the oldest, a nine-year-old, immediately put a plastic doll face down under a toy table to protect the doll from an earthquake. She told her friends and a Half the Sky staffer about the day of the quake, when her teacher ran out of the classroom, expecting the class to follow. Instead, the children sat at their desks until they heard their teacher yelling that they should get out as fast as they could.

All three girls then started cooking with toy utensils, chopping up leaves with a toy cleaver to make soup. When asked why they were only making vegetables, one girl said solemnly: “Because we are very poor. This is all we have.”

Another girl, around 10, took advantage of the ample art supplies in the tent to draw a girl with pigtails and a rainbow. She solemnly explained that she wants to be a mathematician and the drawing was not a self portrait. It was a drawing of her best friend, who after the earthquake left the area and now there is no way to contact her: “I am afraid I’ll never see her again.”

While the volunteers and staff at the tent will provide “psychological first aid” for the children, they will also refer children to professionals at the Mental Health Centre of West China Hospital at Sichuan University when first aid is not enough. Children like a terrified 6 year old girl who, after 50 hours, was the only survivor rescued from her primary school. Protected by the body of her teacher, she survived with minimal physical injuries. But no one could protect her from the emotional trauma of waiting for help for so many hours in the school where her friends and her teacher died and - after all that - learning that her father did not survive.

Of the many volunteers who helped in the tent or attended our trainings none is more impressive than a group of eight survivors from the collapsed Juyuan Middle School, where perhaps 900 children died. Whether pitching in to sweep rainwater from the BigTop before its drainage problems were fixed, or helping to set up toys on newly painted shelves, or playing with children, these impressive, hardworking teenagers have all decided that they want to focus on helping others rather than on what they lost on the day their school collapsed around them: “We received a lot of help from others. Now we can help. When we help people it helps us,” says one of the students, who gathered in a circle in Half the Sky’s BigTop.

One smiling boy bears the most obvious scar of that day—a gash that took fourteen stitches to close. It runs alongside his eye down to his mouth.

Like all of the children who survived, he is mindful of friends who did

not: “At first I felt guilty that I survived. Now because I am volunteering I feel more comfortable.”

The students from Juyuan also provide an example of what was perhaps NCSTB’s Dr. Marleen Wong’s most surprising message to the caregivers she trained in Sichuan. In the midst of the all-too-obvious devastation and pain wrought by the earthquake, Wong introduced new research about a phenomenon called “post-traumatic growth.” A small percentage of children, says Wong, will make positive life changes that are a direct result of a trauma or a disaster. These are the children, says Wong who become “wise beyond their years, more mature, have a deeper appreciation of life,” in the wake of a tragedy. “They have new values and life priorities.”

One Juyuan student explains that not only has he resolved to volunteer in the wake of the earthquake, he has also resolved to change his life:

“Before the earthquake I was not into studying. Now I think it is the most important thing I can do so I can help my country. I can bring hope to the people in Sichuan.”

The day after BigTop #1 opened, I had the great honor of carrying the Olympic Torch on behalf of China’s orphaned children, especially those newly orphaned in Sichuan and Chongqing. Fifty preschoolers from our Half the Sky programs in Chengdu and Chongqing joined me on a rainy Sunday in Wanzhou, Chongqing. It was an exhilarating and wacky time. And we did manage to tell the children’s story – at least to the Chinese media (in the end, no foreign media was allowed.) We were on the front page of the China Daily and featured on national TV news. We didn’t quite go global, but it has been wonderful to hear from so many Chinese citizens who want to help orphaned children. Children in their own communities that they didn’t even know existed.

Half the Sky supporter Anne Chambers has found another innovative way to help young earthquake victims. Her company, RED212, has launched an annual Bill and Warren Day (to commemorate the day Warren Buffett pledged his fortune to the Gates Foundation) to celebrate business people, big and small, as a force for social change. HTS’ Children’s Earthquake Fund is to be the first beneficiary, by auction of a Monopoly game signed by Warren Buffett himself! If you or some other mogul you know would like a shot at this treasure, I’m told there is only one day left!

http://cgi.ebay.com/Warren-Buffett-Autographed-Official-Monopoly-Game_W0QQitemZ250260912893QQihZ015QQcategoryZ156999QQssPageNameZWDVWQQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem

Slowly but steadily, Half the Sky is beginning to find ways to recover from the disaster too. Although we are now firmly committed to helping the newly orphaned and displaced children of Sichuan heal and hopefully find their own “post-traumatic growth,” we are ever-mindful of the many thousands of children to whom we’ve already made a long-term commitment.

Right now, our first Blue Sky provincial training is underway in Hubei Province. Over 100 caregivers from welfare institutions where Half the Sky has no programs are at our model center in Wuhan learning about HTS’

approach to providing family-like nurturing care to orphaned children. We are now offering Blue Sky training sponsorships – a great way to help us reach our goal to put a caring adult in the life of every orphaned child http://give.halfthesky.org/prostores/servlet/Detail?no=90

This fall, funds permitting, Half the Sky will open new Blue Sky Model Centers in Xian, Harbin, Shenyang and Qingdao. We are no longer accepting applications for this year’s volunteer build but we dearly hope that you will consider sponsoring a child or supporting the new model centers in other ways.

You have been so tremendously generous during these awful weeks. Now, as the Sichuan story fades from the news, we are even more grateful that you continue to remember the children whose struggle is just beginning. I don’t know how we can ever thank you enough for all you have done and continue to do. I hope that watching our progress as we work to rebuild young lives – in Sichuan and all over China – will be thanks enough. You know we will always keep you informed!

This should be the last of our emergency updates. I’ll now return to writing you every month or two. Of course, if you don’t wish to receive further updates from Half the Sky, please unsubscribe by sending a blank email to leave-half_the_sky@titan.sparklist.com

If you would like to donate to Half the Sky’s Children’s Earthquake Fund you can do so by calling Half the Sky (+1-510-525-3377) or visit our

website:

http://give.halfthesky.org/prostores/servlet/Categories?category=Children’s+Earthquake+Fund

If you would like a Canadian tax receipt, please donate at

http://www.canadahelps.org/CharityProfilePage.aspx?CharityID=s86248

If you would like a Hong Kong tax receipt, please call Half the Sky – Asia

(+852-2520-5266) or donate online at

https://www.paydollar.com/b2c2/eng/charity/payInfo.jsp?charityId=4947

If you’d like to view previous earthquake journal entries:

http://www.halfthesky.org/journal/

Thank you!

Hello Friends, We got a call today telling us that, for security reasons, our Torch leg is now scheduled a day earlier. I will be running in Wanzhou, Chongqing, on Sunday, June 15 - Father’s Day. I will still run for the children, especially those of Sichuan. Somehow, we will manage to bring the children there. I hope it doesn’t change again!

I just arrived in Chongqing from Sichuan. Yesterday was the one month anniversary of the earthquake. We traveled several hours to a hard-hit mountain town in Beichuan, Hongbaizhen, and worked with children and volunteer teachers. I have added many photos to our website.

A couple of weeks earlier, we braved the rock-strewn roads and broken bridges of Hongbaizhen to deliver relief goods to the children. The whole town was in shock. As painful as yesterday’s visit was, we began to see signs that the town will slowly begin to come back to life. Our communications director, Patricia King gave me this moving report: An 8-year-old boy stands in front of the pile of rubble that had once been his school and explains that he was the last student to have been pulled out alive. When the earth shook, he was one of the obedient children sitting with arms crossed at their desks—some naughty boys were still outside, safe on the playground. For ten frantic minutes, trapped between a piece of concrete and brick on the second floor, he waited. His cries couldn’t be heard over the wailing adults, but finally when the crowd outside the collapsing school quieted down they heard him and came to rescue him with their bare hands.

In the first days after the quake, he couldn’t return to the pile of debris that had once been his three-storey school, but with the help of a volunteer teacher from his tent school, he has visited the site several times and now is not afraid when he comes back. Today, at 2:28, exactly one month after his world shattered, the boy and another child from the tent school placed their hands on their hearts, then bowed three times, saying goodbye to their friends who died at the Hongbaizhen Primary School. Finally these brave survivors vowed: “We will live our lives as best we can.”

In Hongbaizhen, an isolated mountain town where it took three days for the Air Force to make it on foot past a collapsed bridge while the cries of children trapped under heavy rubble grew weaker and weaker and then stopped forever, the pain is palpable. But one month after the earthquake children and adults are also expressing their grief, working to find a way to cope with their pain, and taking the first steps to rebuilding lives. Sitting under a tree outside a tent school only 100 yards from the collapsed Hongbaizhen Middle School, it took only minutes before a group of middle school girls, two with their heads bent into their arms and one sitting up straight, weeping and sobbing, opened their hearts to Vancouver psychologist Dan Zhang and University of Minnesota psychologist Pinian Chang, both of whom were also once students in China. A 14-year-old twin, who aches for her one-minute-younger sister. She escaped the building, but her sister didn’t. Finally her sister was pulled out of the rubble, but with no medical care available, her family listened helpless as she spoke her last words: “I hurt. I hurt. I am so tired. I think I am dying.” Now her grieving sister refuses to go to any school with more than one storey—she tried a middle school with two stories and dropped out after two agonizing days. Still she is trying to take comfort from “Invisible Wings,” the song she and her sister loved and sang together. “I know I’ve always had a pair of invisible wings that take me flying and give me hope.”

Two girls mourning their brother, a 10th grader, and a nimble athlete as well as a good student, who made it out of the building. But he went back to rescue three crying girls only to die when another piece of the building gave way. One of his sisters is tormented by regrets—why did she brush off her brother, who wanted to talk to her a few days before the earthquake when she wasn’t in the mood? Both sisters know that their brother died a hero, but they miss their older brother and cry for him as an adult volunteer encircles them in a hug to try to ease the pain. Meanwhile inside a white tent decorated with balloons and tinsel, a crowd of volunteers hungry for help sit at shiny wooden desks salvaged from the collapsed middle school. Executive Director Jenny Bowen tells them that Half the Sky’s greatest contribution to helping in Sichuan will be to provide training for caregivers. She urges them to identify adults in the local community who can be trained to provide consistent, long-term help for the children long after the last volunteers have gone back to their homes. When she tells them that Half the Sky is committed to working in Sichuan for “at least five years,” they burst into applause. It soon becomes clear why the applause is so heartfelt. These volunteers, some recently arrived and some soon to go back home to their own families, have bonded closely with the children and they know the children will need support for a long time. One wears a beautiful shell bracelet made for her by one of the girls who has become like a little sister. Another favored volunteer’s arms, face, and t-shirt have been decorated by playful children using colored markers. Both the volunteers and the children who cling to them are finding it difficult to even conceive of their leaving. Psychologist Marleen Wong and psychiatric social worker Suh Chen Hsiao of the National Center for Trauma & Bereavement tell the volunteers they have given the children a great gift by providing a school and a routine for the children. Research shows that children who go back to school soon after a disaster fare better than children who have no routine for a long period of time. They also praise the volunteers for developing such strong bonds with the children and then urge those who are leaving to find a new local volunteer they trust to work together with the children before they leave. They also urge the volunteers themselves to get together after they leave Hongzbaizhen to talk through their feelings among peers who understand what it is to try to provide comfort to traumatized children living in a tent school surrounded by rubble and soldiers wearing white masks spreading disinfectant on the site where so many of their friends died.

The volunteers, some with tears in their eyes, explain why they are worried for the children and feel helpless because they cannot help them more. They worry about a 5-year-old girl with a scar on her back from being buried by debris who screams whenever she sees a collapsed building, an unavoidable sight in this mostly leveled town. A thirteen year old boy, the last to be pulled out of the middle school, refuses to come to the tent school so close to where he was trapped. A six year-old boy whose two brothers died, draws a picture with cherries because his brothers liked cherries, but this volunteer thinks he is too calm, toomatter-of-fact: “I am so worried about him. I ache for him.” Wong tells them they have done well. “Do not underestimate how much good kindness can do.” She recommends that they continue to reach out to the 13-year-old afraid to go to school. Visit him at home, offer him some water, bring him some notes from his friends. For the 5-year-old, try to have her draw or tell why she is screaming and help her learn to breathe deeply when she is afraid so that slowly, slowly the screams become less frequent and finally go away. And for the too-calm child, sometimes children have a delayed reaction, which is why long-term help is socrucial: “We have to wait for the child.”

For the Hongbaizhen parents heartbroken by the loss of their children, there was no delayed reaction—they have expressed their grief since the day of the earthquake and they still show it in their eyes that well up with tears even when they express nascent hope for a future life. On this one month anniversary one tiny mom, her hair flecked with gray, shows visitors cell phone photos of the two children she lost. She lowers her arms to illustrate the unthinkable, the collapse of her daughters’ school.She walks slowly away, but not without first thanking Half the Sky and everyone else who has come to help. It is that support, she says, that has recently made it possible for her to start to at least imagine a future for herself without her children. And a short climb up one of the mountains that made Hongbaizhen renowned for its beauty before it became renowned for its suffering, parents are still trying to comfort their children, who died four weeks ago.

At the four-tiered hillside cemetery with hundreds of children’s freshly made graves, parents have laid things that their children once loved—a pink backpack, wrapped candy, spicy Sichuanese snacks, a big teddy bear and a stuffed monkey. A weeping dad injured in the quake, his arm still in a sling, burns paper money and incense and apologizes to his child. “I am so sorry. This is the first time I could come. I hope you don’t mind,” while his wife wails the lament of every parent who has wished that they could have saved the life of the child even at the cost of their own: “Mommy is here for you. How could you go before us? Please wait for us.”

If you would like to donate to Half the Sky’s Children’s Earthquake Fund you can do so by calling Half the Sky (+1-510-525-3377) or visit our website: http://give.halfthesky.org/prostores/servlet/Categories?category=Children’s+Earthquake+Fund

If you would like a Canadian tax receipt, please donate athttp://www.canadahelps.org/CharityProfilePage.aspx?CharityID=s86248 If you would like a Hong Kong tax receipt, please call Half the Sky – Asia(+852-2520-5266) or donate online athttps://www.paydollar.com/b2c2/eng/charity/payInfo.jsp?charityId=4947 If you’d like to view previous earthquake journal entries:http://www.halfthesky.org/journal/

Thank you! with love, Jenny Ps – For our many new friends - Half the Sky is a global NGO that establishes and operates programs that provide emotional and educational support for orphaned children living in government-run welfare institutions in China.

Half the Sky does not operate orphanages. It is not an adoption agency. We exist for China’s children.

Each year we offer a special gift to celebrate fathers that also celebrates China’s orphaned children. We call it The Good Time Fund and use the donations to pay for outings, parties and special fun activities for the children in our preschools. We know that in a lot of homes, dads are synonymous with good times and it’s always been a popular gift. This year, as we struggle to help so many children in Sichuan with their recent loss, it just doesn’t seem right. If you would like to honor that special father this year, please consider donating to Half the Sky’s Children’s Earthquake Fund in his honor instead. Dad will receive a card telling him that his gift also honors all those fathers who lost their children and will directly help those children who lost their daddies.

Dear Friends,

Last October – what seems like a lifetime ago – many of you voted online and made it possible for me to win the Lenovo/China Daily competition to become one of eight foreigners living in China to carry the Olympic Torch. My goal was to run with children from our HTS programs on behalf of all of China’s orphaned children. As fate or happenstance would have it, my bit of Torch history is now scheduled to take place in Wanzhou, Chongqing on June 16 – just next door to earthquake-battered Sichuan.

After the quake, I informed the Beijing Olympic Committee (BOCOG) that I would dedicate my run to the orphaned children of Sichuan. For security reasons, BOCOG will not let me run WITH the children, but they will certainly let me run FOR them. And BOCOG will let the children urge me along from the sidelines. So, if all goes well, 50 preschoolers from the Chengdu and Chongqing orphanages will be with me in Wanzhou. I don’t know if this will be televised but I promised to let you all know when/if our run would happen. You can be sure we’ll take lots of pictures!

Since I last wrote, we’ve been working toward developing a more well-defined plan for addressing the emotional needs of so many thousands of traumatized children. We know we can’t help them all, but we are making certain that, using the resources you are providing us, we will maximize our effectiveness.

Under the guidance of trauma experts from National Center for School Trauma and Bereavement and volunteer pediatric psychologists from China, the US and Canada, our field staff has been training caregivers in shelters and camps and talking with many, many children. What we have learned has informed our long-term plans, which already have tentative approval from the Ministry of Civil Affairs.

In the next couple of months, with your help, we will be creating giant tent “Big Top” Children’s Centers in temporary (estimate is 2-3 years) refugee camps at Dujiangyan, near the quake epicenter, to help the children as the town is rebuilt. Each will offer HTS preschool, after school counseling and art classes and other therapeutic activities for school-age children, as well as counseling and training for caregivers, teachers, parents and foster parents. The first “Big Top” is scheduled to open in QinJian camp on Saturday.

Funds permitting, we will also be creating new permanent children’s community centers in six quake-affected towns as well as setting up Family Villages, supporting traditional foster care, and other HTS programs for orphaned children who are able to remain in their communities, providing long-term support for thousands of children.

I stole away for a couple of days in order to write our proposal to the Ministry. In my absence, HTS communications director, Patricia King, wrote this report:

A Machine to Save the World from Earthquakes

“When I grow up I want to be a scientist so I can invent a machine that will predict earthquakes hours before they happen and I can take all the children to safety. And I will give the machine to everybody in the world for free.”

“All I want is to go home.”

“I want to be with my family.”

“I want the earthquake to be gone so we can be happy again.”

Who wouldn’t want to make these wishes of some of the youngest earthquake survivors come true? The wishes of children struggling to come to terms with a disaster that shattered everything they counted on—the rock solid earth they walked on, the mountains that were supposed to loom majestically above, not break apart, raining dangerous rocks, and most of all the comfort of their homes and their parents and teachers.

The children now attend a “tent school” in the large refugee shelter in Dujiangyan designed to house 15,000 people displaced by the earthquake. They are taught by volunteers in prefabricated, vinyl walled, 9×12 classrooms, each one packed with 40+ students.

The walls are decorated with children’s artwork. It is art that depicts the kind of world the children would like to live in, the kind of world they now know can never be. In this town where the most prestigious middle school collapsed and killed so many bright, ambitious students, one child drew a mobile school complete with a lookout telescope and radar to pick up any sign of danger. The school is floating on what looks like a cloud or a flame that can move it out of danger should the earth below start to shake again.

The Red Thread

A short distance from the refugee shelter and school, on a muddy, rock-strewn field, a huge, white tent with arched, plastic windows stands on high ground above the fast-moving Minjiang River. A large Half the Sky logo with its girl holding a red thread announces that this tent has been provided by donors all over the world, moved to help the children of Sichuan to whom they are connected by the proverbial red thread. One, yellow Ikea delivery truck and one truck with a small Half the Sky logo and the words: “Everything Donated to the Disaster Area” bump their way onto the field to deliver supplies for Half the Sky’s first Big Top Children’s Center. In a situation that is repeated over and over in Sichuan when people learn that Half the Sky is here to help the children, the Ikea truck was able to make the delivery only after a compassionate manager made lots of phone calls to bend the rules to allow the truck to deliver to a heavily damaged town.

All week Half the Sky’s field supervisors and other caregivers have been receiving training about how to provide “psychological first aid” to children in the wake of this disaster. Today the work is more familiar, the kind of work Half the Sky has been doing for 10 years during “builds” when rooms in government welfare institution are transformed into colorful, child-friendly Half the Sky centers.

It becomes clear very quickly though that there are unusual logistical issues for this first-ever tent build. The six inch concrete floor that anchors the tent is solid, but two puddles have collected inside after the last big rain storm. Straw brooms appear so the staff can sweep out the water and strategize about how to engineer a fix so the tent will stay dry during this rainy season in Sichuan. They are helped by a contractor from Guangzhou, who is in Sichuan to build roads wherever needed, including a road that will make it easier to walk from the huge refugee shelter and school to Half the Sky’s Big Top.

It is Dragon Boat Festival day and a holiday, but nevertheless workers on ladders bring electricity to the tent, hanging energy-saving bulbs from the aluminum rafters and setting up the fans that will cool the during the increasingly steamy Sichuan summer.

As the small chairs and tables, shelves for toys are assembled, and bright, turquoise chairs unfolded, the tent starts to look more like a Half the Sky center, a kid-friendly haven in an earthquake-ravaged town where the long task of removing rubble and rebuilding has only just begun.The toys will stay in their boxes for the children to open. There are puppet theaters, a toy kitchen with pots and pans and dishes, a doll house with a mom, dad and children. And there are lots of toy trucks and bulldozers, doctor kits, and uncharacteristically for a Half the Sky center, lots of soldiers, who were the first to reach Dujiangyan and other towns near the epicenter to help.

Nothing is the same anymore…

In Shifang City, Half the Sky’s Child Development Director Ma Lang approached a woman reading alone in a communal shelter where people were cooking and eating and two preschoolers were playing with water, “trying to be children.” The woman looked so young that Lang thought she might be a high school student, but she told Ma that she is a 27-year-old math teacher. There was a “calm coolness” in her eyes so MaLang was surprised that her eyes welled up with tears when Ma Lang asked: “How are you doing?” She answered sadly: “It is tough. I have been here all my life. Nothing is the same anymore. The only thing that hasn’t changed is the fields, the crops. Everything else has changed,” she said.

The teacher told Ma Lang that after the earthquake she helped escort all 41 children from her classroom to safety. Then she spent six, panicked hours that seemed like a year looking for her mother and her three-year-old daughter. Ma Lang put a comforting hand on her shoulder as they both found paper tissue and the woman continued with her story.

Then the Air Force came and carefully removed all the children’s school bags and clothes from the heavily damaged building. “It was very dangerous.” When the teachers tried to help, the soldiers said, “No, it is our job.” When the teachers volunteered to at least stand by the building to collect some of the children’s prized possessions, the soldiers said, “No. It is our job. You stay away from the building. It is not safe.” After retrieving the children’s things, the Air Force built a new, prefabricated school named the “Air Force Loves Children School” in six, working-round-the-clock days.

The young math teacher told Ma Lang that such help and such kindness from the Air Force and “so many people like you” has “made a huge difference” in the lives of those who survived the quake. But despite her gratitude for the help and her relief that her mother and three-year-old are alive, the woman told Ma Lang that there have been “many times” during the last weeks when she has wished that she hadn’t survived.

For Ma Lang, who has been working in the field since right after the earthquake, it is “overwhelming” to learn how many children and their caregivers need emotional support, even those “lucky” ones like this teacher, whose child and whose students survived the earthquake.

The psychologists who are helping Half the Sky train field workers stress that patience is key when working with traumatized children or their adult caregivers. Pediatric psychologist, Pi-nian Chang says it is important not to jump to conclusions and to be a good listener and; “Be quick to listen, listen carefully and be slow to talk.”

At the tent school in Dujiangyan, Chang noticed a taciturn, sad boy who stayed apart from the other children. Clearly not wanting to talk, the boy of about 11 did agree to a game of Chinese checkers with Chang. Slowly, slowly the boy spoke, telling Chang that his parents died in the earthquake and that he had no desire to play with other kids and little desire to go to live with his uncle, who will take him in. A few words from a sad child who is dealing with unspeakable grief by retreating into a shell that he peeked out from for a few moments during a long game of Chinese checkers that ended in a draw.

The earthquake has not stopped the survivors housed at the refugee shelter from celebrating the Dragon Boat Festival holiday. Zongzi (glutinous rice wrapped in bamboo leaves) from the Loving Heart Cafeteria appear and are pressed into our hands as we walk. Psychologist Dan Zhang gives a few t-shirts to one family, who has decorated its small living space with curtains and laid down vinyl flooring so they can take their shoes off outside the room in the traditional way, and those small gifts unleash a deluge of gift-giving by this family that has lost their home. They give us umbrellas and when I mention that I am thankful because I forgot a hat to protect my pink skin from the sun they try to give me sunscreen, which I already have, and they give us salted duck eggs, another delicacy traditionally eaten on this holiday.

We encounter a man concerned about his yellow-beaked bird who, since the earthquake, hops nervously around her cage and seems to have forgotten how to make noise of any kind let alone sing: “We must be patient,” says the man.

But underlying the patience and the resilience of this gracious and generous community of survivors, hunkering down for what many expect will be a long stay until permanent housing is built, is anxiety about how long the world will pay attention.

One mom is worried about her 18 month old daughter, who was buried in the rubble with her grandfather for two hours. Before the earthquake her daughter was friendly to everyone. Now she won’t let anyone touch her except for her family. “What can I do?” When the staff tells her about the new preschool in Half the Sky’s Big Top Children’s Center she asks “How long will you be here?” She is relieved when our staff tells her that many people around the world want to provide help for the long haul.

Like the man who is patiently waiting for his bird to sing, Half the Sky will be patient, working in the hard-hit towns of Sichuan for as long as there are children who need help.

If you would like to donate to Half the Sky’s Children’s Earthquake Fund you can do so by calling Half the Sky (+1-510-525-3377) or visit ourwebsite: http://give.halfthesky.org/prostores/servlet/Categories?category=Children’s+Earthquake+Fund

If you would like a Canadian tax receipt, please donate athttp://www.canadahelps.org/CharityProfilePage.aspx?CharityID=s86248

If you would like a Hong Kong tax receipt, please call Half the Sky – Asia(+852-2520-5266) or donate online athttps://www.paydollar.com/b2c2/eng/charity/payInfo.jsp?charityId=4947

If you’d like to view previous earthquake journal entries:http://www.halfthesky.org/journal/

Thank you!

with love,

Jenny

Ps – For our many new friends - Half the Sky is a global NGO that establishes and operates programs that provide emotional and educational support for orphaned children living in government-run welfare institutions in China.

Half the Sky does not operate orphanages. It is not an adoption agency.We exist for China’s children.

Dear Friends,

It was a Children’s Day with not enough children

Here in Sichuan, Sunday was filled with both sadness and hope. For those parents who lost their only child, it was a day of immeasurable anguish. For those families still whole or partially intact, it was a time of sad resolve to get on with the task of rebuilding their lives and the lives of their children. For children who survived but lost a parent, schoolmates, teachers, home, the holiday toys and candies were small comfort. Still, life goes on and the children will slowly begin to heal. They will need help.

It is now reported that 7,000 children died on May 12.

But many, many thousands more survived. Thankfully, the numbers truly orphaned are much fewer than first believed.

Yesterday, the Ministry of Civil Affairs told us that 420 children are confirmed orphaned. The government continues to search for living relatives of another 1072. Those numbers, though, represent only a small portion of the many thousands of children who need help.

Children who have lost one parent. Children grieving for their lost parents even as they have been reunited with their grandparents or other extended family. The estimated 16,000 children who were injured during the quakes. And countless others children who are struggling to deal emotionally with the horror they have experienced. These are children whose lives were really just beginning—and now must begin again.

Thanks to your generosity, we have helped the surviving children by bringing them much-needed supplies, including supplies to the stranded children in the isolated mountains of Aba, where roads were buried under landslides, and to the children of Leigu, whose villages were threatened by flood. Our sincere thanks to everyone who helped us buy and get those supplies to the children quickly in the chaotic first days. Thanks to the amazing crew at Gung Ho Films, to the wonderful Sichuan volunteers from Silk Road Telecommunications, to our volunteer shoppers and shippers in Chengdu and around China, and to our extraordinary donors who provided the funds that enabled us to act so quickly to get the supplies to the children.

Now that we have completed that first phase of our earthquake relief effort, it is time for Half the Sky to help the youngest survivors begin to heal emotionally. Though we have never provided emotional support for children in the wake of a natural disaster, we have, over the last decade provided that support for 15,000 children living in social welfare institutions who have lost their families - delivering such care is the essence of Half the Sky.

In preparation for our first workshop with the US National Center for School Crisis and Bereavement, our field staff spent last week observing and interacting with children living in temporary shelters and welfare institutions. While the world is rejoicing that they survived, many of these children are mourning the friends and family members who did not and wondering why they are the “lucky” ones. Others are in shock, unable to face the pain of loss of those they depended on most.

At a shelter in Chengdu, one middle schooler who was evacuated from Wenchuan told our team:

“The first floor of the school disappeared. The second floor became the first floor. Our teachers were too busy helping us to have time for their own children. We carried two injured students from the collapsed building to a tent on a mountain top. We stayed in the mountains after that and lived on potatoes that weren’t ripe and shared 2-3 bottles of water among more than 60 of us every day. Later, two students died in the tent. It rained and rained. We knew there could be landslides because we knew a big aftershock could happen at any time, but we didn’t know what to fear any more.”

At at the Sichuan Children’s Activity Center west of Chengdu, our team learned about a boy who feels guilty that he was not able to save the girl that sat next to him in class. When the building was about to collapse, the boy managed to run out of the building. Some of his classmates were not so lucky and he tried pulling out his classmate whose leg was stuck in the rubble. Unfortunately he did not succeed and the girl later died. Now he feels guilty that he could not save his friend and talks about it over and over.

And our staff filed this heartbreaking report from the Zitong Children’s Welfare Institute:

“A boy arrived at the institution with a bandage on one side of his head.The staff gave him a name and estimated that he is two years old. Every time the institution gate opens he runs to it and says “baba,”“mama,” the only words he knows. The expression of his face is one of sadness and fear without security. There was no smile on this face during the whole time we were there.”

On Monday, in cooperation with the MCA and the National Center for School Crisis and Bereavement, we held our first Sichuan Caregiver Traing Project workshop at the Chengdu CWI, a milestone on that long road toward bringing emotional relief to the children. While we tried to keep the first workshop small, because we knew that we needed to have time and interactive discussion in order to make plans for the next steps, it was not possible. The need for caregiver support is just too great. By the workshop’s second day, we included 90 volunteers who’d been working in shelters as well as administrators from the two largest shelters in Chengdu. There will be no shortage of trainees as our field staff and experts head out into hard-hit areas today.

The questions from caregivers and volunteers were challenging. Do we try to gently tell the children who cling to the hope that their parents are alive that they are instead likely dead? How do we reach children who have shut down, refusing to talk about what they went through yet screaming in the night from memories too horrible to consider during the day? How can we help a child who won’t eat, a child who lives in her imagination? Do we let them see us cry? How do we keep our own sanity as we try to be there for the children? Sadly, the experts in child trauma during disaster have heard the questions and have seen the suffering many times before. They were able to provide tools for caregivers and for children, as well as reassurance that they will be there to help as the healing process begins.

Yesterday, after the workshop, we visited a shelter in Chengdu. Children told us of seeing their friends killed, of waking up next to dead bodies, of their fear of falling asleep, their fear of being indoors.

We know that with this workshop our new work is just beginning….we have pledged to work with other organizations and with government to help the children in Sichuan for as long as help is needed. There is no question that this will be a long process and that we will need the help of all of you, who have already given so much.

We know you want to help because our mailboxes are full of offers of tents, blankets, diapers, and strong backs to help rebuild. These are wonderful offers but we cannot accept them now that we have moved on to the work of helping children to heal emotionally.

What we do need is financial support and your trust that we are exploring and will develop and carry out a plan for maximum impact on children’s lives. In turn, we commit to report in detail, and often, how we are using the resources you are so generously supplying. By the end of this week, we expect to be able to report more fully on our midterm and longterm plans in Sichuan. We anticipate that the work may last for 2-3 years. As the emergency eases, we will make certain that Half the Sky’s direct involvement will be limited, as it must, by our mission (providing nurturing care for orphaned children) but we will do our best to facilitate involvement of other organizations that can help meet the needs of affected children in the broader population.

Every year, in June, we launch a Children’s Day campaign to raise funds to bring Half the Sky’s programs to more children in the fall. This year we must do even more. We have to help these children even as we continue to run our programs and open new, comprehensive Blue Sky Model Centers. Never have we needed your help more.

Of the US$600,000 you have so generously committed to help the children of Sichuan, we have spent approximately one-half on emergency relief. We should have a full accounting very soon. We do not yet know what the cost of our long-term effort to rebuild lives will be, but hope to have more information as the plans develop and the numbers of children in need of emotional assistance are clearer.

If you would like to donate to Half the Sky’s Children’s Earthquake Fund you can do so by calling Half the Sky (+1-510-525-3377) or visit our website: http://give.halfthesky.org/prostores/servlet/Categories?category=Children’s+Earthquake+Fund

If you would like a Canadian tax receipt, please donate athttp://www.canadahelps.org/CharityProfilePage.aspx?CharityID=s86248

If you would like a Hong Kong tax receipt, please call Half the Sky – Asia (+852-2520-5266) or donate online at https://www.paydollar.com/b2c2/eng/charity/payInfo.jsp?charityId=4947

If you’d like to view previous earthquake journal entries:http://www.halfthesky.org/journal/

Thank you!

with love,

Jenny

Ps – For our many new friends - Half the Sky is a global NGO that establishes and operates programs that provide emotional and educational support for orphaned children living in 38 government-run social welfare institutions in China.

Half the Sky does not operate orphanages. It is not an adoption agency. We exist for China’s children.

Dear Friends, First, an update on the airlift to remote Aba Prefecture. No less than 40 uniformed soldiers arrived at the Chengdu CWI yesterday to load two big trucks with emergency goods for the 1,000 stranded children of Aba. We’re waiting now for confirmation of the air drop.

This week HTS also erected a giant BigTop at the Chengdu CWI to aid with intake and shelter for new arrivals. Ma Lang and Yang Lei, two of our intrepid team members traveled to Leigu, in hard-hit Beichuan, along with some young volunteers from the Jiuzhou Stadium. They knew the situation was dire, as this is the site of one of the “quake lakes” threatening to overflow. But they also knew there were more than 2,000 children of all ages in those villages and they needed help. I am so happy and relieved to tell you that the mission was a huge success!

I have placed photos of raising the big tent, loading relief goods for Aba and delivery of goods to Leigu on our website. Please visit http://www.halfthesky.org/work/earthquake08.php On Saturday, after we complete delivery of balance of requested relief goods, we will erect a second and even larger BigTop tent in the largest refugee settlement at Dujiangyan City, close to the epicenter of the earthquake. This will become a huge Half the Sky children’s activity center for refugee children of all ages, complete with furnishings, toys, computers, areas for art and dramatic play and reading and quiet talk, everything that a HTS center offers. With your help, this center will serve thousands of children as their lives and homes are rebuilt. And, although we’ve already been busily working and planning, it will mark the official beginning of the second phase of our efforts - addressing the current and longterm emotional needs of the children.

I want to tell you more about the Sichuan Caregiver Training Project that HTS has launched in partnership with the Ministry of Civil Affairs and the US-based National Center for School Crisis and Bereavement. Thanks to one of our supporters, we were put in touch with David Schonfeld,director of the NCSCB and perhaps the world’s foremost authority on child bereavement.Since its inception after 9/11, the NCSCB has counseled and been a resource for governments, schools and organizations, especially those confronted by large numbers of children traumatized by disaster. From hurricanes to wars to school shootings, this organization has a long history and understanding of child trauma, what to expect and how best to respond. Half the Sky is so fortunate to have the NCSCB’s help as we embark on this journey. There are so many unknowns for all of us - We at HTS have never tried to provide services mid-disaster - and our advisers from the NCSCB have not much experience working in China. Knowing we can rely on each other’s expertise, I feel confident that HTS, and other NGOs that we hope will join us in this effort, can have substantial impact, both in these early days and down the road as the long process of recovery unfolds.

During the weekend, I toured hard-hit towns, children’s shelters and orphanages with the MCA, trying to get an overview of the situation. HTS’director, child development, Ma Lang has, of course, been in Sichuan since May 16 on our behalf and was able to give us a great deal of information and insight. This week, a team of seasoned HTS field supervisors, one from each of our programs, is doing a more detailed assessment under the guidance of Ma Lang: Zhang Yuxia, Yang Lei, Zhou Dan and Anni Wang. They will give us their full report on Sunday, but here’s an excerpt from Anni on the first day of observation. The need for trauma-training for caregivers is immense: “In the tent school, as I was looking around the room, my eyes caught a little girl who was holding her school bag very tightly. She had one of the saddest faces I have ever seen and it felt like she didn’t want to be in the classroom. She kept holding her bag and looking at the exit behind, as if she were waiting for someone. When the ‘fun activity class’ started again, she still held her bag, but then later put it down and tried to follow the teacher’s instructions. She was one of the shortest children in class but sat in the back row.

“In the ‘fun class’, the teacher kept saying: “if you are happy, smile….And clapping his hands and he said that a few times walking round the room but the little girl I mentioned didn’t smile. Not even once. I was not sure which of the children in the room were smiling because they were happy or because they were sort of asked to smile. However, I suppose the fun activities will be a distraction (at least for the time being) for children who may have lost a parent or close relative. When I was leaving the room, I waved to the little girl and she sadly waved back.” On June 2-3, we will host a workshop for all HTS field supervisors, program directors and representatives from the MCA and CAB as well as two expert field advisors who will supervise field work in the next phase. Leading the workshop on behalf of NCSCB: Robin Gurwitch, PhD - Professor in Dept. of Pediatrics at University of Oklahoma, Program Coordinator for the US National Center for School Crisis and Bereavement; Marleen Wong, PhD - Director of Crisis Counseling and Intervention Services at the Los Angeles Unified School District; and Suh Chen Hsiao, LCSW PPSC - Psychiatric Social Worker, Team Leader at the Los Angeles Unified School District, Specialist in Crisis Intervention.

On June 4-14, with expert advisors - Pi-Nian Chang PhD, pediatric psychologist at the University of Minnesota, Dan Zhang, MD, PhD, psychologist, counselor, Vancouver Community College, worked with survivors of Tangshan earthquake – HTS will commence field trainings for caregivers, coordinated by Sichuan provincial CAB. Afterwards, Half the Sky will continue to work closely with government and the National Center for School Crisis and Bereavement to develop a long-term plan based both on the NCSCB’s extensive experience with the effect on children of similar catastrophic events and also what is learned during the two week period in the field. It is sincerely hoped that, during the next two weeks, many, many children will be reunited with, if not their parents, surviving family members. For those children who, sadly, cannot be reunited, Half the Sky will continue to assist as best as it can to help mitigate the long-term effects of this disaster.

Half the Sky is a small organization. We are limited by our charter to serving orphaned children. We hope that other child-focused NGOs will join us and the government in outreach. There are many thousands of children who have surviving relatives but who are nevertheless traumatized and need help. Rebecca Chang grew up in an orphanage in China and, with HTS’ Big Sisters Program support, went to university. When she graduated, we offered her an internship in our Beijing office. She has now become a field supervisor in the Big Sisters Program and is helping us now in Sichuan.She understands the children of this tragedy perhaps better than any of us. She sent us this story:

“The place was so dead when we arrived, everything was still, only wind was blowing. I saw a boy standing in front of the rubble of the school for a long time without a blink. I went up to him and said hi.I asked: which grade were you in?He said quietly: Fourth grade.I squatted and said: Why are you always standing here?I saw tears coming up in his eyes. He said: My classmates are gone.Teacher Gao got injured because of me!I didn’t know what I could say that would make him feel better. I just reached out my hand and held his. His hand was cold, so cold. When I was about to leave, I was trying to hold back my tears and asked: What do you want to do the most now?He lowered his head and answered in a shaking voice,‘I want to go to school, but my school is not here any more.’” If you would like to donate to Half the Sky’s Children’s Earthquake Fund you can do so by calling Half the Sky (+1-510-525-3377) or visit ourwebsite:http://give.halfthesky.org/prostores/servlet/Categories?category=Children’s+Earthquake+Fund

If you would like a Canadian tax receipt, please donate athttp://www.canadahelps.org/CharityProfilePage.aspx?CharityID=s86248

If you would like a Hong Kong tax receipt, please call Half the Sky - Asia(+852-2520-5266) or donate online athttps://www.paydollar.com/b2c2/eng/charity/payInfo.jsp?charityId=4947 If you’d like to view previous earthquake journal entries:http://www.halfthesky.org/journal/

Thank you! with love, Jenny

Dear Friends,

I want first to give you an update on our efforts to get food and shelter to the 1,000 orphaned and displaced children in Aba. The roads are now closed. We asked our colleagues at the Ministry of Civil Affairs (MCA) to see if we can possibly bring the desperately-needed goods in by helicopter. A couple of hours ago, moments after the latest giant aftershock, we got good news – a helicopter for Aba tomorrow! More soon -

Yesterday morning, when I arrived in Chengdu, I was invited by MCA to visit some of the hardest-hit sites. We visited Dujiangyan – very close to the epicenter. It was a painful day (I’ve put a few photos on our website http://www.halfthesky.org/work/earthquake08.php - some just too sad to write about) but I was also heartened to see both how quickly the government has come in and tried to take care of the basics - building thousands of temporary shelters and schools – and how the people have come together to help each other. A sign in one of the tent cities reads, “The earthquake has destroyed our homes but it can’t break our spirit.”

Today we visited Mianyang Zitong CWI. A 6.4 aftershock struck moments before we arrived at the orphanage. All of the children were rushed outside and, in what’s become routine now, they all sat calmly in little chairs. There were 8 new arrivals – all of them had lost their parents. It seems they are not brought to the orphanages until officials are fairly certain that they will not be claimed by extended family. One little boy told us in a matter-of-fact way that both his parents were killed. Ma Lang, HTS’ director of child development, after days assisting the displaced children staying at the Jiuzhou stadium observed, “From the volunteers’ and counselors’ perspectives, the children’s most common signs of being traumatized included insomnia, nightmares, tearfulness, indifference, and refusing to eat. In the first few days, the volunteers in the stadium’s ‘inner circle (a holding place for separated children) had to search bathrooms and corridors for children who hid there and refused to eat. The volunteers told me it was heartbreaking to see the children’s eyes and persuade them that they should eat.”

We visited the “inner circle” at Jiuzhou stadium today. Almost all of the children who had not yet been identified by family members had been transferred to children’s shelters. The Mianyang Civil Affairs director told us that many, many children had been reunited – if not with their parents, then with extended families. One of our colleagues at the MCA told us that of the 200 children who’d been brought to shelter at the Chengdu Medical College, only 18 had not been reunited with extended family. Today we met a girl who has become famous in China because she was interviewed on television by Wen JiaBao. It was believed her parents had died. He tried to comfort her. Soon after, her parents were located. Although they haven’t yet been able to get to Mianyang to pick her up, today we met one happy little girl. The media has been making much of the idea of thousands of orphans. Our friends at MCA are not certain this is true and, to be honest, the situation is still too fluid to pin down the numbers. There are certainly many, many children with uncertain status. And they are traumatized and very much need consistent, caring support.

Provincial CAB (Civil Affairs Bureau) has begun the process of sending displaced children to structurally-sound colleges, military bases, welfare institutions, and other facilities. In less-stable areas, where there are fears of flooding and environmental issues, children housed in some temporary facilities are being transferred, yet again. Almost every orphanage has been advised that they should prepare for new arrivals. We met a few sad little faces yesterday at the Chengdu CWI; they are told to expect at least 100 more. The director at Zitong CWI told me the same thing. And so did the director at Guiyang CWI in Guizhou! The truth is, I believe, nobody yet knows.

These past days, the MCA has been working to draft recommendations for the care of displaced and orphaned children. I believe they will release an official statement soon. After two days traveling with MCA officials, one thing is clear - government is extremely concerned that every effort be made to reunite children with surviving relatives before adoption by non-relatives of orphaned children is even considered.

Meanwhile, tent schools are quickly being established wherever children are sheltered. There is a great desire to give the children the comfort of settling into a routine and regular attendance at school is seen as key. I visited a large tent city in Dujiangyan yesterday and the scene at 4:30 pm, with children streaming out of the temporary school toward dozens of waiting parents, was identical to that taking place in Chinese cities and towns every day.

HTS is working hard to complete its emergency relief efforts and turn its attention towards the effort for which it is better equipped – helping orphaned children begin to recover emotionally. By the end of the coming week, with your extraordinary generosity and the help of the amazing crew at Gung-Ho Films, we will have purchased and delivered more than 30 tons of tents, medicines, food and formula, children’s clothing, diapers and other infant supplies. With the helicopter to Aba and the purchase today of an emergency vehicle to transport orphaned and displaced children for 9 counties and one city, we will have answered every urgent request to take care of the children’s basic needs. Now we move on to try to address those needs no less urgent, but more elusive in every way.

Tomorrow (Monday, May 26) Half the Sky will launch its Sichuan Caregivers Training Project. I am thrilled, honored and very, very excited to tell you that HTS will work under the guidance of the foremost child trauma and bereavement specialists in the world, the National Center on School Trauma and Bereavement http://www.cincinnatichildrens.org/svc/alpha/s/school-crisis/default.htm.Based at the Cincinnati Children’s Hospital, but comprising an international network of child trauma experts, the Center grew from the tragedy of the Terrorist Attacks of 9/11 and has served as a resource during hurricanes, school shootings, airline disasters and wars.

Together with NCSTB and MCA, HTS will hold a two-day planning workshop, June 3-4 in Chengdu. Three experts from the Center will lead the workshop. Attending will be four volunteer pediatric psychologists and psychiatric social workers, HTS team of 15 field supervisors, our program directors and officials from MCA and Sichuan CAB. That will be the start of what will likely be a long-term project to help children orphaned by the disaster to recover and rebuild their lives.

I’ll send along further details of the Caregivers Training Project soon. It’s almost midnight and I’m exhausted. I’ve had two days on the road through a landscape filled with aching sadness, determination and hope.

More tomorrow!

If you would like to donate to Half the Sky’s Children’s Earthquake Fund you can do so through Global Giving:http://www.globalgiving.com/pr/2100/proj2086a.html

Or directly to Half the Sky. You can donate by calling Half the Sky(+1-510-525-3377) or on our website:http://give.halfthesky.org/prostores/servlet/Categories?category=Children’s+Earthquake+Fund

Many companies have announced they will match employee gifts for earthquake relief. Please check to see if your company will double your gift!

If you would like a Canadian tax receipt, please donate athttp://www.canadahelps.org/CharityProfilePage.aspx?CharityID=s86248

If you would like a Hong Kong tax receipt, please call us at+852-2520-5266 or online athttps://www.paydollar.com/b2c2/eng/charity/payInfo.jsp?charityId=4947

Thank you!

with love,

Jenny

Dear Friends,

Today we were starting the process of wrapping up the major portion of our orphanage relief efforts. With your help, we have purchased and delivered or are in the process of delivering huge amounts of medicines and medical supplies, tents, cribs, cots, bedding, baby formula, diapers, kids clothing and shoes, rice, noodles, cooking oil, water, powdered milk, bowls, cups, towels, mosquito repellent and much, much more. As we finalized plans to ship, then bring in engineers to erect two giant tents to house hundreds of newly orphaned children, we got an emergency call from Aba Civil Affairs Bureau.

They are caring for approximately 1,000 orphaned and displaced children, most of whom are 7-12 years old. There are over 100 infants. They’d been placing the children in local shelters but had just received news that 70 more children are on the way. There are no more tents and no more beds for them. Further, they urgently need powdered milk and diapers. And they need foods that don’t require cooking as most of their cooking stoves and supplies have been destroyed. They need so much they can’t even give us an estimate.

The roads to Aba are dangerous but the need is tremendous. We have obtained the necessary road pass and organized a convoy of three trucks. Our senior preschool field supervisor, Yang Lei, will be leading the effort along with Aba drivers who are familiar with the dangers. It’s a 3 day round-trip and they leave at dawn. I am so thankful our Half the Sky staff are as tough as they are!

Stop presses! — Just as I finished writing the above, I received the following email. The situation continues to be ever-changing:

“While everyone has done an absolutely incredible job pulling this urgent shipment together, it simply cannot leave tomorrow morning as we’ve all been pushing for. The road between Chengdu and Aba is simply too dangerous to travel, based on all the information we are able to gather. While it hasn’t registered on the news, nearly 200 people have died in the last few days along these roads due to mudslides caused by the early summer rains. Communications are, of course, sketchy, and we know Yang Lei has her permit to travel the roads, but all reports are now that it’s just too dangerous and too unsure to risk take such a risk. The Director of the Aba Institution agrees and the Director of the Chengdu Institution agrees.

“The efforts you’ve all put in today on behalf of the babies at Aba will not be in vain. We will monitor the road situation very, very closely. Civil Affairs wants us to get in, we want to go in, and the moment we feel it is safe, we will go in. The good news is we’ve managed to amass everything on Aba’s “needs list” in one day and it’s staged at Chengdu SWI and ready to load on trucks. The items that were scheduled to load on the Aba trucks will stay at Chengdu, ready to travel to Aba when conditions allow. THESE ITEMS ARE NOT TO BE USED FOR ANY OTHER PURPOSE IN THE COMING DAYS, THEY ARE TO BE KEPT TOGETHER, AND SEPARATE FROM ALL OTHER INVENTORY, AND WILL TRAVEL TO ABA AS SOON AS CONDITIONS ALLOW. This is a very difficult decision for us to make, but we simply can’t risk life to save life.”

You can see that the relief effort is not quite over. I will keep you all posted.

Meanwhile, we have spent almost exactly the amount we have raised in donations (just over US$300,000. And we have not yet really begun the second critical phase of our operation in Sichuan: training caregivers and volunteers to care for and address the non-material needs of displaced and newly-orphaned children. There are billions being donated for rebuilding. But we need help putting young lives back together.

Here’s a note from Ma Lang, who was at a “model” relief shelter today talking to newly-orphaned children:I talked to a junior high school girl. Here is part of our conversation:Lang: Do you know there are psychologists and counselors there to help people?Girl: Yes.Lang: Would you be willing to talk to a psychologist?Girl: Yes.Lang: What would you like to talk about with the psychologist?Girl: Things that make me happy. Like happy stories and movies.Lang: What do not you want the psychologist to ask?Girl: [pause] Do not ask me where my families are!P.S. There is little coordination among the 10 plus counselor groups at the shelter. One main method they chose their “clients” was to look for sad faces. If a child or adult looked sad, the likelihood was that she would be “counseled” by more than one group of counselors. One concern that I had was that the children (and adults) might be traumatized again by the “counseling” process.

And then….

“I met Lei in the “inner circle” at Jiuzhou Stadium. He was a cute and curious second grader who’d lost his parents in the quake. He approached me and asked me what I was doing when I was organizing the pictures I took. We looked at the pictures together, and chatted a little bit. He told me that after the earthquake, there come aftershocks, and then comes the epidemic. He said epidemic means you die if you do not wash hands before and after meal. When I asked him what earthquake is, he said if you talk loud, earthquake happens. I lowered my voice and asked him if our voices were loud. He said, I do not know.”

Half the Sky is finalizing plans to work in consultation with an important international resource for children traumatized by crisis. I want to thank all of you who have worked to help us locate Mandarin-speaking child trauma specialists. I think we are assembling an outstanding team. I will share more details in the next few days. What I hope I can communicate to you all is that our work is really just beginning. We need more help!

If you would like to donate to Half the Sky’s Children’s Earthquake Fund you can do so through Global Giving:http://www.globalgiving.com/pr/2100/proj2086a.html

Or directly to Half the Sky. You can donate by calling Half the Sky(+1-510-525-3377) or on our website:http://give.halfthesky.org/prostores/servlet/Categories?category=Children’s+Earthquake+Fund

Many companies have announced they will match employee gifts for earthquake relief. Please check to see if your company will double your gift!

If you would like a Canadian tax receipt, please donate athttp://www.canadahelps.org/CharityProfilePage.aspx?CharityID=s86248

If you would like a Hong Kong tax receipt, please call us at+852-2520-5266 or online athttps://www.paydollar.com/b2c2/eng/charity/payInfo.jsp?charityId=4947

Thank you for all you’ve already done for these children – and for what you will do.

Dear Friends,

Our work in Sichuan is in full swing now and it’s becoming harder to find time to write. Yet I know how deeply concerned you are about the children, so will continue to grab all the moments I can to tell you what we’ve learned.

Since earthquake statistics are so readily available now, I will no longer include them.

You will see below that there are preparations being made in many institutions to receive newly orphaned and displaced children. There have been numerous media reports about the thousands of new orphans; we have received dozens of adoption inquiries here at Half the Sky (which has no involvement in adoption!)

I really want to stress that many, many of these children you’re hearing about will be reunited with family – if not parents, then living relatives. In rural China, especially, workers often leave their children with grandparents so that they can support their families by working in more prosperous areas. Many of the children do have parents – parents who are desperately trying to find their children. The government is keenly aware of this and, while there are many, many media reports of adoption programs and applications submitted for domestic adoption of the children, we don’t believe that any adoption procedures will be put into place before every means has been exhausted to find parents or other living relatives.

We, along with Ministry officials, are meeting with the provincial Civil Affairs Bureau on Monday and may have more information about the plans for transitional care of orphaned and displaced children. We are exploring how we can, working with other NGOs, best help care for the children in the interim and assist the government in its efforts to provide for their future.

Here is the current situation:

Chengdu CWI has been notified to prepare to receive 100 children; they expect that more may follow. At the same time, the orphanage has moved the children out-of-doors out of concern for safety. (photos on our website http://www.halfthesky.org/work/earthquake08.php) Half the Sky is working with local government and erecting a giant tent that can serve as shelter for orphaned and displaced children for as long as necessary.

More news on this early next week.

Chengdu 2nd SWI - 35 senior citizens and 10 preschool-age orphans have been transferred there from Dujiangyan City. 40~50 more orphans will be arriving soon. They are in need of 50 beds, sets of bedding, as well as the same number of clothes for children between 5 and 7 years old. Before the arrival of those 45, the institution had 100+ children and 500+ elderly people already. During aftershocks, they stayed in tents; but now, they have all moved back to the buildings.

Chengdu 3rd SWI – Caring for 30 children, all fine, not expecting new arrivals.

Wenjiang District SWI, Chengdu – Caring for only 4 children, all fine, not expecting new arrivals

Dujiangyan SWI – All of the children are under good care and there is no shortage of food or any daily necessity. 12 new children were recently brought in, but they’ve been having much success in locating surviving family members and have high hopes for these children as well.

Luojiang County SWI, Deyang City – The children are being cared for in a shelter, including 6 new arrivals. They are expecting a 2 year-old and have asked for a crib as well as diapers, powdered milk and rice.

Deyang SWI – Has prepared to receive new children per instructions.

Nanchong 2nd SWI – They are caring for 27 children and are expecting another 20. They are sleeping in tents due to concerns about aftershocks.

They ask for 10 tents, tarps and beds.

Cangxi SWI, Guangyuan City – They have some building damage. They have been advised that they may be receiving children from Qingchuan but this has not yet been confirmed by the provincial Civil Affairs Bureau.

I told you that 13 of the 24 children brought to the Zitong SWI had been reunited with family. Today I was told there were 12. Two signs hang at the institution. One says “There are only 20 children from Xiao Ba Primary School in An’Xian in our institution. There are no children from Beichuan. If you are looking for those from Beichuan, please go to (name) Hotel. If you are looking to adopt, please come in 3 months.” The other, poignantly says, “Yan: only her mother was home; XianLin & LiGang are

brothers: only their father was home: Cheng: her father is working in Xinjiang; Dan: her parents are working in Zhejiang; Jun: about 2 years old, parents whereabouts unknown; Zhou: about 1 year old, parents whereabouts unknown. Needs: Books to read; stable place to live. Emotional

needs: their family…their relatives.”

Mianyang – The Jiuzhou Stadium that houses 20,000 refugees is now, considering the situation, well-organized and, beyond trash bags and disposable gloves, there seem to be no unmet material needs. While there were, at first, about 1,700 children staying in the “inner circle” of the stadium (on the first floor inside the building), most of those children have either been reunited with family or transferred to smaller shelters in Mianyang. There are only about 130 children remaining. There are volunteer counselors and psychologists for these children. The “inner circle” is strictly guarded by police, soldiers, and volunteers. Mr.

Liang JianHua, a volunteer leader and veteran, has been supervising care of the children in the “inner circle” from the very beginning, with the help of about a dozen volunteers. According to Ma Lang, he seems to be an extremely competent, kind, and devoted person.

Meanwhile, for children less well-served, Half the Sky is moving goods like crazy and working hard to initiate the next, and most important phase of our efforts – trauma counseling and care for displaced and orphaned children.

Thanks to help from dozens of volunteers, we’ve delivered about 100 of the promised tents, cases of blankets, tarps, clothes, diapers, food and medicines to several institutions. There will