Olympic Bound!

LWB would like to send a HUGE thank you to Shenzhen Airlines for their support of orphaned children in China. This airline has chosen 100 children from orphanages around China to attend the 2008 Olympic games in Beijing. We were so excited to learn that five of the kids in our education program in Henan province were chosen for this wonderful opportunity. One of the boys had decided to keep a diary this summer to keep track of what he did. Little did he know when he made that decision that he would have this great adventure to record!


We know all of them are going to have an absolutely amazing time.

Getting to Know You

Cindy Wu, our nutrition director in China, has been getting to know a LOT of children in the past few months! Right now she is on the road in Anhui, visiting our programs there. Just a few weeks ago she visited the Jinjiang orphanage in Fujian, where we provide supplemental formula to around 70 infants and toddlers. Even with all those children to meet, photograph, weigh and measure, Cindy and local manager, Daphne, were also able to share stories about their precious personalities.


Regarding the little girl in red and white, Cindy writes, “She is a curious girl. They were having dinner when we walked into the room. She stared at us even when she turned around to take food from the nanny. She looked at Daphne and me with eyes widely opened and her mouth still full with rice. When we were ready to leave, she waved bye-bye and even came over to the door to see us off.” It is wonderful to see this little angel looking so healthy!


This angelic-looking child is "a naughty girl with strong personality. Min was crying when I walked into the room. I held her up and asked her what make her cry so loud. The nanny told me that Min is very naughty, she likes to wear nanny’s shoes and walk around. The nanny told her not to do it because she didn’t want Min to fell down with the big shoes. That made her upset and she started to cry. You can see Min was happy again because she got the big shoes anyway!"


"Ya is a little beauty. She was a premature baby when she was sent to the orphanage. The nanny said actually she is very healthy now. She has very good personality and she always has a sweet smile on her face. She is the little princess of the nannies. They all love her!"

It is a great treat for our nutrition team to receive these reports. As we read about the children in our programs, we begin to feel a special connection to them. You should hear the cheering when we learn that one of "our babies" has come home to a family of their own!

(Note: The names of the children have been changed to protect their privacy.)

Happy Birthday!

Recently an Education sponsor asked how they could help their sponsored child celebrate a birthday. As birthdays for children in orphanages are so vastly different than for other children, we chatted about providing a treat to the birthday girl and all her classmates.

We decided to ask our manager in China and the teacher to choose a treat that all the kids could enjoy in honor of the birthday girl’s day. The treat turned out to be a new t-shirt for each child.

The kids loved getting an individually wrapped present and then modeling for the camera. What a fun celebration for the kids. It was indeed a happy birthday, and we hope you will enjoy the moment with us.

Linda Mitchell
Believe In Me Jingzhou Coordinator

Meet Lyn Thomas - Team LWB

Over the next few weeks, we would like to share with you the stories of some of our wonderful supporters who are participating on Team LWB in the Marine Corps Marathon to raise funds for LWB's Foster Care Program. Meet Lyn Thomas.

My name is Lyn Thomas. I am a mother of four and a runner. I have been running for four years and love it! I am very excited about running for Love Without Boundaries as it holds a special place in my heart. I have been blessed with two children from China.

My daughter is from Hubei Province and my son is from Guangdong Province. My little girl was in foster care and for that I am thankful. She was loved and cared for by her foster mother. I feel it helped her transition to our family with ease because she understood how a family works. Hugs and kisses were not a stranger to her.

My son spent fours years in an orphanage. He has had a hard time learning how to be a kid. I wish he would have had the chance to be in foster care to learn what family is all about. I am running for Jake and for all the little angels in China that need a mother's love. Go Team LWB!

Rejoice!

Budgets are tight. Gas is expensive. Food costs more. My children listen to me rant and rave about not wasting food because I just spent a ridiculous amount at the grocery store! How is it for your family? What items have you had to cut back on?

Inflation, of course, affects orphanages and foster families as well. Cribs cost twice as much as last year. The price of rice has doubled. Higher quality formula is more expensive . . . and out of reach for many orphanages. Love Without Boundaries feels the economic pinch too. Sometimes children wait to receive services. We hate when we have to say, "Sorry, we canʼt help you" or "Sorry, you will have to wait." Yet we are overjoyed about each and every child we are able to help--the lives we can save and the lives we can change.

Rejoice with us! Here are just a few of the children whose lives we are touching this year:

In these hard economic times, we are especially grateful for everyone who has made a commitment to the children in China. Thank you for your continued support.

Toys

When I was a young child, I wanted to grow up to be Mrs. Santa Claus. This is because I wanted to have access to Santa’s giant sack containing every kind of toy in the world. I grew out of the Mrs. Claus phase by the time I was 6, but I doubt the excitement over seeing new toys ever really leaves a person.







It occurred to me this morning that I am creating new
Santa Clauses with our Foster Care Managers as they are being sent a variety toys and books, for every age group, to carry around with them when they do their monthly visit.


I can just see the curiosity on the children’s faces wondering what will come out of the sack. And the best part is that every child will get a new toy. But I am getting ahead of myself here on how this all started.

In order to more closely monitor developmental progress in the children, we have revised our foster care report format. The Henan programs were the first to try out the new format on our April reports.

The new report has several sections which include movement, vision & hearing, language, cognitive, and social development. The new format has been useful in determining where the children are developmentally. They also give the foster families ideas for age-appropriate activities to promote development. Each age group has different developmental milestones to check their progress against. The reports vary every other month so that the children have 2 months to work on their progress before they are tested again.

As we know from experience, children who have spent their first months in an institution may be somewhat delayed due to the lack of one-on-one attention that families can provide. We are hopeful that these new reports can more closely monitor the development of our foster children and we can intervene when necessary to get the best care for the kids as early as possible.

Much of a child's development centers on play. We have learned that many of the children do not have toys in the home that help promote their development and learning.


So, we are providing the foster care children age-appropriate toys so that they can be encouraged to develop to the best of their ability.

This will be a learning process for all of us to see if this format will help the children. We are hopeful that it will a the first step on the road to a brighter tomorrow.


Note: please disregard the child eating the book that we sent. This program is still in the trial stages.












For more information about our Foster Care Programs please go to:
http://www.lovewithoutboundaries.com/foster.cfm

Home Sweet Home

On March 28th two young women who have lived in an orphanage their entire lives took a huge step toward independence by moving into their own apartment.
These young ladies have worked hard to graduate from high school and attend college. They are both now employed and have decided it is time to become more independent. LWB is assisting these young ladies in their endeavor by providing rent assistance, help with furnishing their apartment, and hiring a “house mom” to live with them for a time and teach them life skills such as cooking, cleaning, shopping, negotiating, and social interaction with neighbors and landlord.
As you can see, the girls had fun on their shopping spree picking out items for their new home.
We are able to help these courageous young women because of our generous donors who have supported them every step of their journey, and we want to say THANK YOU!

Karen McGinty
Shantou Education Coordinator

New doctor for Fuyang

Ever since we first learned of the Fuyang orphanage in Anhui, we have had a very special place in our heart for the children there. We are so grateful to our donors who stepped forward to provide them with a coal heating system, a bathroom and shower for the kids to use, new cribs, blankets, formula, and more.

One of the things that they told us about in October was a true need to have a doctor on staff, as so many of the babies who enter the orphanage are very sick. We are so happy to announce that a doctor has now been hired, and so simple medical care can now be provided, such as providing antibiotics and care to babies who spike high fevers or get pneumonia.

We are funding this doctor at the moment out of general funds but hope to have a place on our website soon where we can list projects like this in case anyone wants to get involved.

We are so happy that the babies in Fuyang will now have a doctor on site to help watch over them.