South China Morning Post
Wednesday October 4 2006
A mother's charity gives hope to Henan's Aids orphans
Foundation run by ex-US scriptwriter has improved the lives of thousands
By
Zhuang Pinghui
When Jenny Bowen, a scriptwriter and mother of two adopted Chinese girls, began helping other mainland orphans eight years ago, she had no idea her decision would turn into a lifetime commitment and result in moving her family from California to Beijing.
But her sacrifice and hard work have paid off. Her brainchild, Half the Sky Foundation - named for the Chinese saying that women hold up half the sky, and the fact that 95 per cent of healthy abandoned babies are girls - has improved the lives of thousands of orphans and is at the forefront of helping those hit by the gravest misfortune: orphans whose parents died of Aids.
The foundation is working with the Henan Bureau of Public Welfare on a pilot scheme to give family care to children orphaned by Aids.
'We have converted a government orphanage for children orphaned by Aids into a foster village,' Mrs Bowen said. 'Each new family has six children whom the foster parents commit to raise to adulthood. Families living just down the street do not have Aids, so the children don't feel like they are being stigmatised or isolated.'
The programme involves 48 orphans in the foster village in Shangcai county, one of the hardest hit counties on the mainland. The group also supports about 200 children living with similar foster families in villages across the province.
'We developed a school curriculum to help the kids to deal with emotional problems, such as grief, anger, hopelessness and feelings of being outcasts and alone. We also have training and parenting classes for the married couples who commit to raising orphaned children,' Mrs Bowen said.
The Aids project is the foundation's latest effort to help children living under government care. Since opening the first two centres in Changzhou in Jiangsu and Hefei in Anhui in 2000, the foundation has quickly expanded to 30 centres around China to provide one-on-one family care, education and enrichment programmes for children in government orphanages. It recently registered in Hong Kong and opened an office in the city last week.
The centres are built close to orphanages, where trained nannies (for children from birth to 18 months) or teachers (for two- to seven-year-olds) offer preschool education such as dancing and art, or simply give the children the individual attention they would get in a family.
'We train the nannies in simple therapies, such as how to have a relationship with the baby. So from a very early age the babies can develop a relationship like a normal child in a family. Children raised in an institution might have trouble trusting others when they grow up,' Mrs Bowen said.
The nannies, viewed as substitute grandmothers, work six days a week and take care of three children each. 'The babies know the nannies are there to take care of them when they cry. When the nannies go to work in the morning, the babies just go nuts. It's like children seeing their mother,' she said.
The centres also have programmes tailor-made for school-age children, and even for those up to the age of 21, who have special needs, including tutoring before examinations and tuition for higher education. Thirty-five orphans have gone to college, financed by the foundation. One girl who graduated from a prestigious university in Beijing last year even joined the organisation.
Although the foundation had a difficult start to its charity work - it took three years to get permission for its Aids project - Mrs Bowen said she was still amazed by the speed at which it grew.
She attributed the quick expansion to favourable timing, because the central government had recognised the importance of nurturing. 'The officials saw the difference. Before we went there, children were sitting and banging their heads against the wall. One year later, this typical institutional behaviour was gone. So now we have open access and we can go wherever we have resources,' Mrs Bowen said.
When she arrived in China in 1999, nobody talked about nurturing. Now the nurturing programme has become the top priority, evident in the central government's efforts to set up national guidelines for nurturing education in orphanages.
The foundation has opened a centre in Nanjing where government employees can receive training and develop expertise.