Peter & Vivian Li - Sharing Their Good Fortune
For one San Francisco Bay Area family, fundraising for Half the Sky started with Richard Bowen’s book, Mei Mei, Little Sister: Portraits from a Chinese Orphanage. When Ava Chan showed the book to her 14-year-old son Peter and her 13-year-old daughter Vivian (at left with HTS Operations Director, Ivy Yu) two years ago, they poured over the haunting portraits of girls living in Chinese orphanages. “We were so touched by the moving photos,” says Peter. The siblings asked Ava: “Mom how can we help? They kept going back to the Mei Mei book and asking, “What if they don’t get adopted?”
Ava told her children that the older the children living in Chinese orphanages are, the less chance they have of being adopted. For Peter and Vivian, her answer was a call to action. For Christmas, instead of asking for toys, Peter and Vivian asked their relatives and friends for cash so they could add those funds to their allowance money to sponsor a child. Then last year planned a luncheon in their home for 30 friends. With the help of Half the Sky’s operations manager Ivy Yu, Peter and Vivian explained Half the Sky’s mission and provided entertainment as well. Both are accomplished pianists who played a mazurka, a waltz and a polonaise. The luncheon included a drawing for tickets to a San Francisco Giants baseball game, gifts cards to Starbucks, and a Mei Mei book.
At the lunch, Vivian and Peter’s friends were very generous when asked for donations as were the companies where Ava and her husband Pui Li work, which provided matching gifts. Now Peter and Vivian are sponsoring several children and they are also kids4kids Big Sisters sponsors.
This summer the siblings ran another wonderfully successful fundraising lunch featuring “special guest” Karin Evans, author of Lost Daughters of China, tai chi, cello and piano performances, and a raffle with items donated by local businesses.
Peter and Vivian’s success as fundraisers is not surprising given the intensity of their commitment to help children in China. They realize they are lucky to have a loving family and a comfortable suburban San Francisco lifestyle. And as Chinese-Americans they realize that had they been born in different circumstances they might not have been so lucky. Says Vivian: “We are Chinese and we want to help.”