Our friends at Hands On Shanghai have a project that we can all get behind:
Helping to serve the basic needs of orphans and disadvantaged children in Anhui、Jiangxi、Gansu、and Shanxi Province, HandsOn Shanghai, in partnership with Mifan Mama will host a children clothing drive at MVC on September 24th.more ›
A scandal involving family planning officials trafficking in newborns has just come to light in Hunan province.
Chinese volunteers have organised a charity event and donated over 100 tonnes of rice to Sarah Obama, the relatively poor step-grandmother of US President Barack Obama who "only recently got electricity in her metal-roofed shack" in Kenya. The rice was for her 82 adopted orphans aged between four and 18 most of whose parents have died from AIDS, as well as other impoverished, starving Kenyans. Said Julius Ole Sunkuli, Kenya's ambassador to China, "She will be very happy to see the support from China after she returns from Obama's inauguration."
Thomas Crampton points us to a special fundraiser held Friday night in Shenzhen by the American Chamber of Commerce in South China to benefit orphans. Star of the evening was none other than Presidential-elect Barack Obama's half-brother Mark Ndesandjo. The media spotlight was firmly on him as reporters turned up in full force to get close to Ndesandjo.
Al-Jazeera takes another look at children, this time at the 150,000 homeless children that the government estimates roams the streets of China. Our hearts are drawn to Wang Pan who wandered the streets alone for a year after his mother was put on death row for murdering his father (while he watched), and Guo Jianhua who himself was once an absent father and is today the founder of an orphanage in Shaanxi province.
Of the more than 500 children who lost their parents in the May 12th earthquake, only two have been adopted, the Washington Post reports. According to China Daily, however, only one child has been adopted. As many as 88 children are in temporary care, while the rest have moved in with relatives. Despite the earlier outpouring of grief and adoption enquiries after the earthquake, many of the children are unable to find adoptive parents because they are over 10 years of age and handicapped.
USA Today reports that adoption agencies across the United States, particularly the China-only agencies are experiencing a great surge in enquiries after thousands of children were orphaned by the Sichuan earthquake:
"There's lots of interest," says Joshua Zhong, co-founder of Chinese Children Adoption International, one of the largest China-only agencies in the USA.more ›
We've all seen over the last week how the cruel earthquake has left parents without children and children without parents. As the focus now turns to healing and restoration for survivors and giving them tools with which to pick up the broken pieces of their lives, the government has now begun to disseminate information on active steps that concerned individuals considering adoption of children and babies orphaned by the disaster can take. Here is some English-language information we found on China Daily via People's Daily (the availability of which indicates they are open to foreigners adopting the earthquake orphans):
