The Bowen Archives

Category: China

  • Built with Love and Hope

    Surely some of the most moving and joyful moments of Half the Sky’s early days occurred on our orphanage volunteer builds.

    The first was in summer of 2000 and, like all things in China, final official approvals came just a few weeks before we’d need to start work on the proposed children’s centers. After two years of negotiations and pleas, the Chinese government agreed to give us a chance. But we’d better not blow it! We’d already found our trainers and planned the curriculum; now we needed help keeping our promise to transform gloomy orphanage “playrooms” into happy “learning environments”. Right away.

    Not knowing what sort of response to expect, we sent out a call for volunteers:

     “Now here’s an invitation to adoptive families out there who may wish to make a hands-on contribution to benefit the children who wait. Half the Sky invites a small number of families to join us in setting up preschool and grandma rooms and play spaces in each of two welfare institutions. The work will consist of light carpentry, painting, toy assembly, room and outdoor play space decoration. Children are, of course, welcome. It will be HOT, but it should be fun. We can’t offer any subsidy for your expenses but we can promise a full heart. If this adventure appeals to you, please let us know ASAP. It’s only a month away and this will, of necessity, be a very small work group.”

    Thankfully, even though it was last minute, the volunteer crew applications came in a flood. And for the 50+ orphanage builds that followed, we never had a shortage of eager volunteers. Each build was different in its own way, but, for those of you who didn’t manage to join us, the experience usually went something like this:

    Our volunteer crews (often adoptive families with their children) would arrive at the international airport (Shanghai, Beijing, Guangzhou) closest to our destination. They’d be laden with big boxes stuffed with all the developmental toys and supplies we couldn’t find (at least not the non-toxic version) in China. We’d then head by train or bus, to our new project site.

    We weren’t usually greeted by a brass band!

    After a brief orientation, the crew would pay a first visit to the children. As soon as they met, there was no doubt why the volunteers had come from so far away.

    All too soon it would be time to leave the children and settle down to a week or so of hard work and new friendships.

    Everybody pitched in. Even orphanage staff!

    As the renovated rooms began to take shape, toys and trikes were assembled.

    And finally, when this…

    …was turned into this…

    …Our newly trained teachers put finishing touches on the preschool and then it was time to celebrate!

    We always hosted a big “wrap” party. Everyone was invited.

    And everyone signed the wall. “Built with Love and Hope”.

    Today, China’s child welfare institutions are adding OneSky programs on their own. That is, of course, what we always dreamed. But we sure do miss those builds!

  • Hurry Spring!

    You may have heard the theory that when spring finally comes to China, its warm, sunny weather will mean the end of the coronavirus epidemic.

    If repeating something enough makes it true, this theory’s a winner. The “spring solution” has been part of every conversation I’ve had with our Chunhui team in China these past weeks as they struggle under increasingly stressful circumstances.

    Chunhui Children is OneSky’s sister organization. We first dreamed of creating a local Chinese little sister back in 2008, when two major events—the Wenchuan Earthquake and the Beijing Olympics—made it clear that Chinese citizens now had both the concern and the resources, and might be ready to support programs to benefit their own children at risk. Chunhui finally was granted official registration in 2012, is now a recognized public charity, and, although it still needs our help, is not quite such a little little sister anymore.

    Speaking of spring, the name Chunhui means “the warmth of spring sunshine”.  The beautiful Chinese language has many layers; the name also refers to a Tang Dynasty poem where “chunhui” alludes to the warmth of a mother’s love.

    So besides praying for spring, right now, in China, the loving mamas (and babas) of Chunhui are doing their best to keep our children safe and healthy. In order to protect them, the government has now completely closed off the orphanages. All institution staff, including our program staff, must remain inside. And thanks to Chinese citizens’ help and yours, we have been able to source and donate thousands of masks and bottles of disinfectants to the institutions.

    The rest of our staff in China continue to work from home and are taking some time each day to participate in online training. That will continue into March if necessary. Online chat groups have also been set up to communicate daily with staff in affected areas, providing support where anxiety is highest.

    As you might guess about this hardworking team, even those who are not anxious are feeling more than a little stir-crazy. So besides studies and video chats and finding ways to distribute protective gear to the welfare institutions, our program teams have also joined in an effort to banish the cloud of loneliness and boredom hanging over the country by using social media to share parenting tips, games,  and stories for housebound families with small children. Here’s a sample:

    Meanwhile, news from the villages is concerning. There are a few isolated infections in one village where we work. Thankfully, none of children or their families are affected. Our village Family Mentors are coaching parents and grandparents how to best to keep the children active and engaged while exercising necessary safety precautions. Many parents have not yet returned to their factory and construction jobs after the Spring Festival holiday since most production has been suspended. While a comfort for our children to have their parents at home during the crisis, the financial strains will only grow worse over time.

    As I’m sure you can imagine, we at OneSky are also feeling our share of financial strain and anxiety. Fundraising to support our programs has slowed as everybody tries to predict how the virus might impact the economy. Our Early Learning Center in Vietnam is closed but hoping to reopen next week. Our trainings for home-based care providers is on hold. And our beautiful new center and training base in Hong Kong sits silent and not-quite finished, waiting until building supplies can again cross the border. We are so grateful to have a whole other world of learning and sharing with our multilingual online learning community, 1BigFamily. I’ll tell you more about that in another post.

    There is one bit of happiness to share. As I write this, it is the first day of Tsagaan Sar, Mongolia’s Lunar New Year. Like all lunar holidays, it’s a time to celebrate with family and friends, give gifts, feast at lavish banquets, and hope for the best in the New Year. Perhaps this Year of the Rat will give us another chance!

    шинэ жилийн мэнд хүргэе!

    With love and gratitude,

  • A Challenging New Year

    Well, the Year of the Rat is off to another ominous beginning as the coronavirus (covid-19) spreads across China and beyond.

    Twelve years ago at this time, the last time Rat appeared in the Zodiac cycle, China was hit with a crippling wave of Spring Festival storms that paralyzed the whole country. Some of you may remember OneSky (then Half the Sky) staffers and volunteers ferrying diapers and baby formula to snowbound orphanages across the country.

    Three months later, the disastrous Wenchuan Earthquake struck. OneSky and its amazing community of supporters again sprang into action, delivering supplies and erecting giant BigTops to provide safe spaces for displaced children to play, learn, and receive grief counseling. It was only the 2008 Beijing Olympics that kept that Year of the Rat from becoming a total disaster.

    And this Rat year’s coronavirus crisis brings other painful memories to some of us at OneSky. In 2003, we were with a group of volunteers setting up early learning centers in Hunan Province when SARS appeared on the scene. Although such times are scary and sad, China survived then and it will again today.

    When SARS Came to China

    Right now, as you can imagine, all government orphanages are closed to visitors for the duration. OneSky orphanage program staff are living at the institutions and working in shifts to provide care for the children. Like others, the institutions urgently need surgical masks, protective clothing and disinfectants. Unfortunately, we’ve been unable to help; the shortage is nationwide. The situation in Wuhan (where we launched our programs in 2007) is particularly serious, but thankfully, none of the children or our staff are infected. No one risks leaving the welfare institution campus.

    Wuhan in Happier Times

    Across China, all businesses serving the public (restaurants, cinemas, shopping malls), with the exception of grocery stores, pharmacies, hospitals, and others that provide necessities, have been asked to close their doors until further notice.

    Aside from the welfare institutions, our OneSky teams in Mainland China, Hong Kong, Vietnam and Mongolia are all working from home. Governments have temporarily closed schools. In China, they are using the time to strengthen professional studies and have organized study groups by region, function and programs. We are very thankful to have developed “1BigFamily” online learning communities wherever we work. Even in times like these, we manage to stay connected.

    Meanwhile, in one of Hong Kong’s poorest districts, where we’ve been working so hard to get ready to open the doors of the P.C. Lee OneSky Global Centre for Early Childhood Development—our new regional training hub and demonstration family center, a safe place for at-risk children and families—opening day has been indefinitely postponed. Still, we forge ahead. With protests and pestilence, we have never felt more needed.

    Here’s hoping that the Year of the Rat soon lives up to its promise of prosperity and new beginnings!

    With love and gratitude,

    Jenny

    P.S. Lately, I’ve been trying to learn how to take a little more time out for quiet reflection. Quiet not being my natural state, I’ve begun to contemplate a new book project. If your child (or YOU) participated in our China programs and might be willing to share the story of what came after, I would very much like to hear from you. Please write to me. Thanks!

     

  • For Hong Kong’s Invisible Children

    A few years back, we decided to expand OneSky’s work to serve children left behind in China’s rural villages.

    A massive wave of economic migration from village to factory was tearing apart poor families across China, putting children at risk of abandonment. When we visited some of the affected villages, we could see little difference between the children we met there and the babies and toddlers who brought us to China in 1998. Too many little ones were spending their precious early years without the nurturing love and support of parents. We knew the damage done can last a lifetime. And so our Village Programs began.

    It didn’t take long for the new programs to reaffirm the positive effects of responsive care on young children at risk, whatever the setting. And now it became clear that, as neighbouring countries aspired to imitate China’s economic success, economic migration was affecting children across the entire Asia Pacific region. We resolved to take lessons learned from the orphans and do what we could to help strengthen vulnerable families even outside China.

    In addition to building government partnerships and demonstration model children’s centres country-by-country as we’re now doing in Vietnam and Mongolia, we decided to explore creating a regional training hub—an accessible home base— in a relatively neutral, central Asian location. At the time, Hong Kong was an obvious choice.

    Hong Kong had always been a friendly haven for OneSky. We’d had a tiny office there since 2006 and held an annual fundraising event to support our work in the Mainland. It was a prosperous city, for sure, but we knew there were also thousands of migrant families with small children right there in Hong Kong, living in the shadows, just struggling to get by.

    Now it was time to give something back. In late 2016, we hosted a Roundtable gathering in Hong Kong to share our ideas with the local community and potential partner organisations. It was a full house! We explained to the group that, while creating a training base for the region, we wanted also to be sure OneSky could bring real value to the Hong Kong community that has been so kind to China’s orphaned children. With the Roundtable’s enthusiastic support, we launched a steering committee and an 18-month needs assessment. Our findings were pretty bleak.

    Despite Hong Kong’s glittering facade, one in five children live in poverty. One in ten lives with a single parent. Families of the city’s most vulnerable children include the unemployed, single parent households, new arrivals, ethnic minorities, and teenage mothers. New arrivals, in particular, have a poverty rate of 30.1% compared to the overall average of 14.7%, and many cannot speak Cantonese, the local language. While there are sufficient services for children 3-years and older, there is little available for poor families with babies and toddlers. They are Hong Kong’s invisible children.

    And so, we got to work. We proposed to create a child development centre in one of Hong Kong’s poorest districts, Sham Shui Po, offering training of trainers for caregivers and teachers who work with at-risk children 0-3; parenting skills training; a place for sharing innovations, facilitating workshops, special courses; and a demonstration early learning center that targets very young children who fall through all the cracks.

    It has been 4 ½ years since we began our Hong Kong project. Besides fundraising, permit applications, design, construction, recruiting, and nonstop efforts to engage government and understand how to best serve the community, there have been challenges that no one could have foreseen. Some pretty major challenges! Still, between civil unrest and pandemics and quarantines, we managed to open our doors in May 2020.

    Somehow, our hardworking team has reached out to plan potential partnerships with over 50 local service organisations and, despite frequent closings and Covid restrictions, has already touched the lives of 437 children and their families.

    We have many miles to go before we realize our dreams for the invisible children of Hong Kong, but this month we are proud to be celebrating our centre’s first anniversary. Tough as it’s been, we still see a bright future ahead. Stay tuned!

  • Notes from Our Founder

    Happy New Year and welcome to a new decade – OneSky’s third!

    If you were around in our early days (see antique Bowen photo above), you may remember some of my frequent and often lengthy letters from China. I dearly wanted to find a way to bring everyone along on the incredible adventure of creating Half the Sky, but back then, there weren’t a lot of options. So I sent long emails. Lots of them!

    Today our world is quite a different place. There are zillions of ways to communicate: Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, assorted chats and all their offspring. We are swamped with information. But now it comes in bits and bytes—not much substance. I think we could do better by all the good-hearted folks who make our work possible year after year. So I’ve decided to slow down a little and start writing a monthly message to our friends.

    Don’t worry—there is still a solid team of fabulously competent people doing the real work that is OneSky. This new chapter will give me a chance to sit back and tell you about them….

    About nearly 2,000 women and men working quietly and without recognition to give forgotten children a fresh start. About the transition from Half the Sky to OneSky. About all the changes in China since our early days. About the expansion of our work from orphanage to village to factory zone to urban slum, and from China to Vietnam to Mongolia. I want to tell you more about the children—the many tales that don’t get told. And I want to tell you why I believe our work matters so much…today, maybe more than ever.

    Looking back, it always begins with an indelible memory. A room full of sadness like nothing I’d ever seen before. Rows and rows of little girl babies  and toddlers lying forgotten in their beds or sitting in little chairs. Eerie silence. No cries. This was how they spent their days. And if nothing was done, it might be how they would spend their entire childhoods. More times than I can tell, I saw those babies over and over again. I saw them in my sleep.

    Call it destiny or call it delusional, I knew I had no choice but to try and fix things. I was a writer. I needed to rewrite that story. And so WE have. All of us together. Countless stories that now end with “happily ever after”.

    When I took that giant leap of faith 22 years ago, I wasn’t sure what would happen. Now, when I look at what we’ve built together, it’s beyond what I could have imagined. And though our job is far from done, there are a lot of tales waiting to be told.

    One of my favorite things about the holiday season is receiving greetings and updates from families and children whose lives OneSky has touched. You may remember this little girl.

    Two years after her adoptive family returned her to the orphanage, little Juanjuan spent all her days in a wheelie-chair, going nowhere. We were told she was autistic; nothing could be done. Xiamei, a novice OneSky nanny asked to try to help her.

    “I knelt down and softly called Juanjuan’s name, but she had no response. I used a toy to try to get her attention, but she lowered her head even more. I know it will take time for her to feel attached to me and to trust me.”

    But after just a couple of months, Juanjuan’s magical journey began to unfold.

    And in the course of a year, our OneSky team simply fell in love with Juanjuan—one teacher in particular. And so, Juanjuan became part of her family. They named her Ziyi—”Little Joy”. Last week, Ziyi’s mama sent us this holiday message:

    “Our Ziyi is now a third grader and is very popular at school. She’s a good student and loves dancing and ukulele playing. The first thing she does after school is to finish her homework and then immerses herself in music. She knows lots of songs and dance. She keeps her ‘song list” in a little notebook. Like her whole family, Ziyi is an eager volunteer. Her favorite project is ‘Bring Happiness to Left-behind Elders and Children in the Village’ where she performs for the elders and reads books to left-behind children. She is so happy to help others!”

    In these times, when our world sometimes feels broken beyond repair, there is no better feeling than watching a hurt child emerge like a butterfly from her cocoon. And Ziyi’s story is only one of many thousands of stories we are rewriting together. How lucky we are!

    Our work is about doing what is right and fair for all children, yes. But it is also about the future…the world we leave for generations to come. Like our own children, the children OneSky serves—orphaned, neglected, left-behind—hold our world’s future in their hands. How we treat them today…the kind of start they get in life…will likely echo for years to come. In that sense, they are our children too. And they should matter to all of us.

    Stay tuned for next month’s journal. And if, by chance, as you read these tales, they inspire you to send me stories of your own, please do! I’ll be right here, waiting.

    With love and gratitude,

    P.S. We’re aiming for a more ambitious monthly newsletter; my journal’s only part of it. Please watch for it!

  • Meet the Future – Mingyu

    Meet the Future — Mingyu

    T

    he situation has changed dramatically in China’s children’s welfare institutions since OneSky began its work in 1998. Today, there are more boys than girls, and few healthy typically developing children like Mingyu* in our programs. More than 95% of institutionalized children have special needs, and much of our caregiver training now focuses on helping young children to thrive, whatever the circumstance.

    Although we’re always striving to get better, at its heart, our OneSky Approach hasn’t changed one bit. Every young child, girl or boy, whether orphaned or left-behind in China, or migrant in Vietnam, or failing to thrive in Mongolia, or forgotten in your own community, needs the same thing: nurturing, responsive care, early education, and lots and lots of love.

    We at OneSky thank you for making possible a new beginning for Mingyu and hundreds of thousands of children like him.

    *To protect the privacy of the children we serve, when we tell their stories, OneSky uses pseudonyms.

    The Facts About Preschoolers

    • Playing is critical to a child making social connections, expanding and using their imagination, and developing language and motor skills.[1]
    • Severe neglect appears to be at least as great a threat to health and development as physical abuse—possibly even greater [2]
    • Small children whose parents talk to them frequently know 300 more words by age 2 those whose parents rarely speak to them. [3]
    • Children who enjoy playing a musical instrument or singing, greatly increase their math skills, attention span, and hand-eye coordination. [4]

    The OneSky Approach

    Little Kids … The Best Investment You Can Make