Children's Hope International E-Newsletter

DEVELOPMENT AID:

Geneva Global Foundation
Lives Changed in Henan

BLOG OF THE MONTH:

Made for an Angel
Raising the Money to Fly to His New, and Only, Little Brother

PARENT-TO-PARENT:

Parent-To-Parent
Almost Magic - the Connection Between Mother and Child

KIDS CORNER:

Kids Corner
Kids Scrap for Favorite Memories

* * Calling all Young Artists * *

Stick figures to masterpieces ? share your child's art with Children's Hope. Scan the art and e-mail the digital file to Jennifer Newcomb

PROGRAM UPDATES:

	China A Surprise for 22 Children's Hope China Families, Referrals Received "Early"!
	Colombia Homecomings!
	Ethiopia Ethiopia's First Adoptions!
	Kazakhstan How it Works: Adopting from Kazakhstan
	Russia Awaiting Re-Accreditation
	Vietnam Happy First Week in August for Three Families

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Nia (left) and friends from �Our Chinese Daughters Foundation� tour at the Great Wall

We adopted my daughter, Nia, when she was 10-months-old from the Chenzhou SWI in Hunan, China. In November 2007, when she was 5-years-old, we made a return visit with Nia to her orphanage. Based on the information listed on my daughter�s referral document, we also were able to locate and meet with the people who found my daughter and who looked after her during the first several days of her life. Since many families may not have much information on their referral documents to follow up on, I thought providing some details of the events when she was found might be of interest to other adoptive families.

For her fifth birthday, my daughter collected donations to buy items for the orphanage as her birthday gifts. When we arrived in China, we first joined our tour in Beijing. My daughter loved touring with the other kids in our group, even the long bus trips became play dates.

After Beijing, we flew to Changsha, the capital of Hunan province, to meet up with our local Hunan guide for the four hour road trip to Chenzhou. When we arrived in Chenzhou, the Vice Director of the Chenzhou SWI took us to the local market (where she said our money would go the furthest) to buy baby clothes, shoes and rolls of diaper cloth. The next morning when we arrived at the SWI, the purchased items were piled high in the conference room, and Nia wore a huge smile when the directors presented her with a certificate of appreciation. Nia had been going to Chinese language immersion school since 3 years of age, so she made herself at home with the SWI staff, and the next thing we heard was that she had gone to another floor by herself to demonstrate to the SWI staff what she had learned at her martial arts classes.


Nia shopping for rolls of diaper cloth at the local market with the Deputy Director of the SWI.	The Director and the Vice Director of the SWI presented Nia with a certificate of appreciation, the donated gifts are in the background.

Our local guide told us that, by Hunan standards, the Chenzhou SWI was the middle of the pack � not the wealthiest and not the poorest. However, we found that even with scarce resources, the staff was very dedicated to their young and elderly charges, some of them have worked there 20+ years. There were many posters in the conference room displaying which countries the adopted children went to, and the cooperative work done by the SWI with Half the Sky and the Amity Foundation.

Nia looking over photos with the SWI staff.
Nia (in front with the striped coat) participating in exercises at a local Chenzhou kindergarten.

Our local guide�s abilities really shined in her ingenious detective work. My daughter was found in an outlying rural township which was another two hours outside Chenzhou. Based on the name of the town, and the names of two women listed on the referral document, Susan was able to hunt down the two women to arrange a meeting with me. One of the women worked in a factory in neighboring Guangdong province, and we did not know until the last minute whether she would be able to make the 10+ hour bus ride back for the meeting.

Since this was unknown territory, I had decided to just go myself with our guide to the meeting. It was priceless for me to meet these two honest decent women, and have them show me where they found my baby daughter. The younger woman, the one who currently worked in Guangdong, said that she had come across a small bundle, with the baby wrapped up inside, at the Civil Affairs Building gate during her 5 a.m. walk one morning. She picked up the baby who was calm and was blinking at her, and she was sure the baby had just been placed in her path by the birthparents when they saw a passer-by coming. She thought they were nearby watching in the dark, and if she had not picked up the baby, then the birthparents would have tried with another passer-by. This gave a very proactive meaning to me of the term �the founding place�, and answered questions I had about how long my baby daughter was at the gate and whether she cried.

The younger woman took the baby to her friend (the second woman), who worked at the SWI of this little township. The second woman said that she washed and cared for the baby, and reported the finding to the police station so that the announcement to find the birthparents could be posted. She had worked at the Chenzhou SWI before (Chenzhou being the nearby large city), and she said she knew that there were more opportunities for the baby to be adopted into a better-off family there. So after the required waiting period, she transferred the baby to the Chenzhou SWI. Both women were very disappointed that they could not see Nia this time, though they were delighted with the photos of her that I left them.

They said they thought the birthparents were peasants from the surrounding rural area who had taken a bus into the town. They said that girls can find jobs within the town, therefore to families who lived within the town it would not matter whether the baby was a girl or a boy. But it mattered to the peasants to have a male offspring. They said that they also heard of more peasant families who kept their 4 or 5 female children, and told the village authorities that they just didn�t have the money to pay the fines. They said that between the two of them, they had found and taken care of several babies, but this was the only time they heard back from someone.

The two women insisted on treating us for lunch, and we exchanged gifts. Their depth of feelings was representative of many people from the small towns and villages (qualities that I loved when I myself was growing up in Asia). So we now treat these two women just as if they were my little daughter�s birth-family.