Hello again from Beijing. Today we spent the day at New Day Creations Foster Home. Like I said yesterday, this is one of my favorite charities in China. There are approximately 30 children at New Day, of which 2/3 are in private foster homes. The children who remain at New Day are given wonderful care by their Aunties.
There is a 3/1 ratio of children to Aunties. They have a daily schedule of activities that includes lots of play time, interacting with the other children, and of course lots of one-on-one attention and love from their Aunties. The bedrooms are divided to only allow 3 cribs in each one. There is a window for every room. The children’s names, pictures, and daily schedules are attached to each of their bedroom doorways. The hallways are filled with poster size pictures of their children. The playrooms are filled with wonderful educational toys, and the pre-school classroom looks like it could have been from a school here in America. Lots of crafts, puzzles, musical instruments, etc. Just very, very impressive!!
If you’ve not had a chance to visit their website, I would encourage you to do so. I decided not to post any pictures, because New Day has done a wonderful job photographing their facility, children, and some of their daily activities which is all on their website. Here is the link again, http://www.newdaycreations.com/foster/
On the homepage, if you click on “Tour” you will see pictures of everything that I just spoke about. You will also find the children’s daily schedules there. If you want to see all the children, click on “babies” and there will be pictures of every child, as well as information on them, including what their special need is.
New Day is a privately owned organization run by American families who volunteer their time there. These people have left their homes and families in America to serve these children. I have nothing but respect and admiration for them—thank you New Day for the difference that you are making in all of these children’s lives!
As for the ZKO team, the nurses trained in both the morning and afternoon, and again, the training was given to the foster parents. The families all seemed to enjoy what they learned and as with Taiyuan, they were full of questions.
While this trip to China is about Zhanjiang and the Open Arms program, we felt that since we were traveling with 2 nurses that we needed to give back to just a few of the programs that are working so hard here in China to care for the orphans. There is so much work to be done here, and the ZKO team wanted to try and do our part in helping to support them in their work.
Tomorrow we are off to Zhanjiang!! We will actually be able to sleep in a little and possibly take in a few of the shops around us before heading out to the airport after lunch. We will be arriving in ZJ around 9:30 pm, which will be Saturday morning for all of you. It is still hard to believe that we are finally here and that the dream of an infant nurture program in ZJ is finally becoming a reality!
Please continue to keep us in your prayers. They mean so much to us. Please email us, we love to hear from everyone back home.
Thanks again for following along on our journey.
The ZKO Team
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