News
Seminar on Foster Care
The Social Welfare Division of the Amity Foundation held a Seminar on "Foster Care" in Nanjing October 9 - 12, 2000. Fifty-eight participants from 33 orphanages and local civil affairs departments throughout China attended the seminar. Participants included those who had started foster-care projects in orphanages, or were interested in starting them in the near future.
In sharing their experiences representatives from orphanages in Shanghai and Nanjing and the provinces of Jiangxi, Hunan and Jiangsu underscored the advantages of foster care for child development compared to institutional care.
Amity invited overseas experts to talk about foster care since it is still a very new concept in China. These included Pam Awtrey and Joy Hilburn of the Bethany Christian Social Service in Minnesota, Kity Chen from Hong Kong, who works at Gui Gang Mother's Love Orphanage in Nanning, and Robert Glover, from Care For Children (UK) presently working in a Shanghai orphanage. Seminar topics ranged from the aims of foster care to selection and matching of foster care families, their training, and development of a support network.
Wu An'an, Director of the Social Welfare Division of Amity, provided a history of Amity's work with Chinese orphanages, stressing the importance of foster care projects in China. Amity began experimental foster care projects in a few orphanages in 1996. This has now expanded to 24 orphanages and involves more than 200 children. One important feedback from participants at the end of the seminar was the realization that a foster care project should be child-centered: Its purpose is to help find a loving family for a child rather than to find a child for a family.
Amity Grandmas Conference
Organized by Amity's Social Welfare Division, the "Amity Grandmas Conference" was held in Nanjing, November 15 to 17, 2000. It was attended by 68 Amity Grandmas from 23 orphanages throughout the country.
Participants were introduced to Amity's work with orphans by Wu An'an, Director of the Social Welfare Division. Dr. Hong Bihua, volunteer Amity staff and a retired doctor spoke on child care and development. The Amity Grandmas Project organizes and supports local volunteers, most of them retired women, in caring for disabled children in Chinese orphanages. Initiated by Amity, the project began at the Nanjing Orphanage in 1991 with the recruitment of four retired doctors and nurses from St. Paul's Church in Nanjing. Since then, the project has expanded to 25 orphanages with 116 "Grandmas" providing individual care and attention to orphans on a daily basis.
The conference was a venue for the sharing of experiences. The "Grandmas" described how care, given with love, had improved and brought great changes to the lives of abandoned children in the orphanages. They had established close relationships with these children and become strongly attached to them. They told their stories as a mother would, with love and passion, demonstrating that every child, no matter how disabled, is lovely and is to be valued. The first of its kind, the conference provided a rare and exciting opportunity for Amity Grandmas to get together and share their experiences. They left the two-day conference full of energy and commitment, proud to be Amity Grandmas.
