Every year in China, thousands of young children – some only hours old – lose the love of family. Given up by parents too poor to care for them or parents who wanted a boy, they live in orphanages where untrained caregivers provide food and shelter, but not the loving care and attention that every child needs to develop normally. They are children who soon learn that they are unwanted. And like all children – they deserve more.
Nearly 100,000 children wait inside the walls of 1,100 government welfare institutions. There they languish, their lives empty.
Except where there is Half the Sky.
Since 1998, Half the Sky has given 35,000 orphaned children the benefits of family love, nurturing care and guidance essential to normal development. The programs are so transformative that the Chinese government officially licensed Half the Sky and invited it to become its only partner – to create a model children’s center and training facility in every one of the country’s 31 provinces.
Our Big Idea: Transform orphan care forever in China. Take $1 million and turn it into 100,000 lives saved tomorrow – a million lives over time. No other organization is so perfectly poised to do just that.
Half the Sky has a dream to train every caregiver in China so that no child need ever languish without love again. The Chase prize can make the dream real.
Today there are 12,000 untrained, unskilled caregivers tending China’s orphans. We can train them all! It can cost as little as $88 to provide initial training to a caregiver to become a nurturing nanny, preschool teacher, foster mom or youth mentor in Half the Sky’s innovative approach to orphan care. With your vote, we can win the prize and hold 24 large-scale (500 trainees each) regional trainings across China for 12,000 orphanage workers – a first round of training for every single caregiver in the country. The impact will be huge and immediate.
Only Half the Sky has won the trust to make such a massive project happen.
Half the Sky exists only in order to ensure that every orphaned child will have a caring adult in her life and a chance at a bright future. After years of effort, we now have the opportunity to dramatically improve the child welfare system in China. It’s an extraordinary opportunity, but it will take time. Many children must wait. Some will not survive.
But if we win – By the summer of 2010, we will hold the first of 24 regional caregiver trainings – then again every other month for 4 years. We already know that the training is a revelation to caregivers. It will forever change the way they look at the children in their care. And while there will be follow-up costs over the years to help maintain program quality, $1 million can provide a first round of training for all.
If we win the prize, we will jumpstart this groundbreaking effort. Your vote will impact thousands of children’s lives.
A vote for Half the Sky is a vote for every forgotten child.
