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November, 2002 | |
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To Our Generous Supporters, I received Dr. Hong's report from her trip to Jiangxi in September so thought this would be a great time to update you on our Altrusa/Amity projects. You can view Dr. Hong's Field Visit Report here on our site. She visited the orphanages in Jiujiang, Ganzhou, Ji'an, Xinyu, Shangrao, Hengfeng, Yujiang, Yingtan, Fuzhou (Linchuan) and Nanchang. Becky Miklos, our Nanchang foster care coordinator, is just returning from adopting her second Jiangxi daughter and visited four of the orphanages with Wu An An from Amity. So she'll have more news and hopefully lot's of photos to share in the next few weeks once she and her daughters get settled in. My family and I have moved (bigger house in the same town and unfortunately still lot's of boxes to unpack). You can either use the Altrusa P.O. Box (below) or e-mail me for my new home mailing address. This update is a little long so you may find it easier to read if you print it out first. And don't give up too early. Be sure to look for updates below on foster care, hugging grannies, school tuition sponsorships, medical needs, heart surgeries, equipment needs, other ways you can help, and endowment funds.
Foster Care We are now sponsoring 226 children in foster care which includes children at twelve different orphanages! This means that there is almost always a child in need of a new sponsor to replace one that had to drop out so if you're interested in this let us know. The cost is $396 a year (or $198 every six months) except some of the special needs children at Nanchang which are $588 for a year. We've continued to place an emphasis on children with special needs and/or those who are a little older. These are less likely to be adopted and it's so exciting to see them with a family of their own. And the love and pride that their foster parents show for them is wonderful, such a difference from spending years in orphanage care. We now have many children with hepatitis B in foster care and several with cerebral palsy or other physical or mental handicaps.
Hugging Grannies Although 226 children in foster care is fantastic there are hundreds more children still in the orphanages. The Hugging Grannies is a very special program where we can reach a large number of children for the amount of money spent. We now have 45 Hugging Grannies, some in each of 12 different orphanages. Dr. Hong visited many of them during her trip. Many are giving extra attention to the disabled children or those with "failing health". Often a Granny will be assigned two or three of these children to give individualized attention. They help them with rehabilitation exercises and make sure they get the proper nutrition and "work to improve their mental and physical capabilities". Dr. Hong observed very noticeable improvements in many of these children during her last visit. Amity would like to have another conference for the Jiangxi Grannies and we need some donations to help with the travel and lodging expenses for this. The first conference was very beneficial, the Grannies learned about child development and also had training on working with the disabled children and how to help them with their rehab exercises. They learned a lot and also received support and encouragement to continue with what is sometimes quite a difficult and discouraging task. In addition the Grannies need some rehab equipment to help them work with the ever increasing number of children at the orphanages with disabilities. Other Grannies are able to provide the infants in the orphanages with more physical contact which is crucial to their emotional, mental and physical development. And we would like to start a few more Grannies that will focus on the school aged children and assisting them with their studies. The yearly stipend for a Granny is $544 and more funds are needed for this very important program. Debbie Thompson will soon begin helping to coordinate our Hugging Granny program and we're hoping that we can get more information about each individual Granny and perhaps exchange some correspondence. If you'd like to be an individual sponsor for a Granny please contact her at imifeng@cs.com. But, not all the Grannies will have an individual sponsor so donations of any size are much appreciated. You might want to consider giving a donation towards this special project as a "gift" to your friends and family members. We do have gift cards available and will send one to you (to give) or to the person you designate the gift for if you request it.
School Tuitions The success of our sponsorship is becoming apparent as we see the increased number of students we'll have this year in vocational high school, nursing school and even university. If you will be sponsoring your school child again this year and haven't sent in your $118 donation please do so as soon as possible. If you sponsored a child last year and haven't heard from us or didn't reply to Peggy yet to let her know you want to sponsor again this year then please e-mail her right away at peggy@gurrad.com. We've mailed end of the year school reports and photos of all the schoolchildren (except those from Yihuang) to their sponsors so if you didn't get one please let me know. To keep their administrative costs low Amity only has enough staff to send these reports once a year. But if you're sponsoring a child this year that is new to our sponsorship program (so there's no end of the year photo) we're hoping to get an information sheet and photo of them within the next couple of months.
Medical Needs Dr. Hong's report did mention a few new medical needs but the costs weren't included in her summary list at the end of the report so we're waiting for more information on these. Please check our website periodically for new needs if you'd like to help in this area. Right now we're still needing funding for surgery for a fourteen-year-old with ambiguous genitalia which will cost $1450. We've funded several surgeries so far this year which include cleft lip and palate repairs, surgery for club feet and other orthopedic problems, hernia repairs and cataract surgery. We've also provided hearing tests, hearing aids, leg braces, orthopedic shoes, crutches, wheelchairs and other medical treatments.
Heart Surgeries Funds were raised by one of our sponsors this year to provide heart surgery for a schoolchild in Ganzhou. This was in memory of Xiao Lan, a girl she met in China that later died from congenital heart disease. The Ganzhou child recovered quickly and is now back at school, able to keep up with the other children. When I saw her in April she was very small for her age due to the effect of her heart disease on her growth so hopefully she'll do some catching up now. We have received a generous donation to provide surgery for an older orphan at the Xinyu orphanage and money has been pledged for a Gao'an child to have heart surgery as well. I was so relieved to receive this support since the heart surgeries are quite difficult to raise funds for. But we still have other children that will need heart surgery so donations of any amount to our heart surgery fund would be much appreciated.
Adoption Sponsors sometimes ask about adopting a child they're sponsoring. Right how it is not possible to request a specific child and to make such a request could jeopardize our programs. We receive strong cautions from Amity every time they send any photos that they are not to be used for adoption purposes. The only option is to check with agencies that have waiting child lists and see if the child happens to be listed. I do have a list of agencies with waiting child lists so e-mail me if you'd like a copy.
Equipment We get frequent requests from the orphanages for various equipment needs. Right now the Ganzhou orphanage has asked for playground equipment which will cost about US$1300. The Shangrao and Ji'an orphanages have asked for beds and blankets for which we need about US$1000. Hengfeng requests an incubator for premature abandoned infants which is also around US$1000. Several orphanages need clothes washers and dryers. They ask for the industrial sized ones so the cost can be as high as $3000-$4000 for each orphanage. These are also very hard to raise money for and they don't always seem as important as some of the other projects. But when I picture the orphanage staff washing all those diapers and clothes by hand and trying to hang them up to dry during the cold, rainy season and also think of how excoriated my daughter's bottom was when I received her it does seem worthwhile. And less time spent doing all that work by hand should result in more time available to spend with the children. I hope that some of you might be willing to help with these needs. There are several other ways you can help as well. We're going to produce a CD about our projects and need comments from sponsors and adoptive parents about the importance of foster care, Hugging Grannies, school support, etc. to either their own child or their sponsored child. And from sponsors we'd some thoughts and feelings about what it's meant to you and your family to be able to help a child. For some of these we'd like to record your voice but we can also have someone else read your comments for the recording. Please e-mail your thoughts and comments to Tom Doran at doran.tom@verizon.net. He'll know how to go about recording your voice or if you'd just like to e-mail you comments for someone else to read in he'd love to receive those also. We're looking for someone who could design certificates suitable for framing for our Hugging Granny sponsors. We'd like to include a photo of the Granny on them. So if you're creative/artistic and have the equipment/supplies needed for this please contact me. It would be great to have help from someone who can read and write Chinese well and has the needed software to exchange e-mails in Chinese. Amity's office assistant that spoke English and handled most of the e-mails communication with us has left and so far the funds aren't available for Amity to hire anyone to replace her. So communications, reports and updates have been very slow recently. If we had someone who could e-mail back and forth in Chinese we should be able to get the information that we need in a much more timely manner. We'd love to find some corporate sponsors and grants as our projects now involve a large number of children and orphanages and the amount of money needed is quite high. It's hard to feel confident that we can continue at the current level and possibly expand some while relying solely on the donations of adoptive families and other interested individuals. I'm working on gathering together the information often requested by corporations but I don't have time to make out all the applications or write letters to potential corporate sponsors. I'd love to have some of you help with the grant applications themselves and letter writing to find possible corporate sponsors. And any other fundraisers that you might be able to organize would be much appreciated. Perhaps an event with your local FCC group or in your community. Many local service clubs have an interest in providing support to international projects so perhaps you could write a letter to those in your area asking for a donation for a certain need that we have. If you have a business you could consider donating a certain percentage of sales to those who mention Altrusa/Amity. If your business has a web site you could donate a percentage of any purchases from customers coming through a link at our website. Visit our "Donate While Shopping" page on this site to see companies you can buy from that are currently donating, including amazon.com and some Chinese/adoption related businesses. Our new endowment fund program is another way to ensure ongoing support for these projects. Your principal (donation) can be used to provide funds indefinitely. There is a general fund for our China Orphanage Projects that can receive donations of any amount. And there is also an option to have your own "named" fund as well, named after yourself or a family member or other loved one. To have your own endowment fund requires an initial donation of at least $3000. Then the fund has five years to reach $10,000 through interest/income and additional donations. Please e-mail me if you're interested or have further questions. And remember, smaller donations can be made to the general China Orphanage Project endowment fund. As the end of the year approaches consider using our gift cards and giving donations in honor of your family and friends as their holiday gift. Altrusa Foundation is a 501(c)(3) organization so your donations are tax deductible, consider a donation now if you'd like to have it included in your 2002 tax year. It's very exciting to see how these projects have grown and to think about the large number of children who have benefited and who continue to benefit. But it takes a lot of support to continue and I hope you'll help out in any way that you can. I appreciate your past and ongoing generosity, I am constantly awed by how many of you are willing to help. Thank you so very much!
Peggy Gurrad
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