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January 28, 2008
In the Know
Two small groups of Chinese women hand make each piece of Mai Pearls jewellery. Mai Pearls therefore donates 10% off its profits to Operation Blessing’s care programs. These programs are available for China’s needy children, orphans, handicapped children and children suffering from various diseases.
Whilst in Beijing at the beginning of January, I had the pleasure of visiting Operation Blessing’s head quarters and hearing more about these projects. Operation Blessing have six projects; Healthcare, Surgical Assistance, Clean Water, Education, Disaster Relief and Back to Sound.
Although many children living in poor areas in China are not required to pay for their full tuition, related school and educational costs exceed the ability of many families living in poverty and extreme poverty. Operation Blessing China’s Education Program has assisted thousands of children from 14 provinces with their tuition and related educational costs, helping many who otherwise would never complete a primary and middle school education.
Operation Blessing China also seeks to find ways to help assist the educational needs of children of migrant workers living in China’s cities. For more information www.obchina.org
Posted: January 28, 2008 12:34 PM
January 15, 2008
Happy New Year!
All of Mai Pearls’ jewellery is made by two small groups of Chinese women. As this is the case, Mai Pearls donates 10% off its profits to Operation Blessing’s care programs. These programs are available for China’s needy children, orphans, handicapped children and children suffering from various diseases.
I had the pleasure of visiting Operation Blessing’s head quarters in Beijing at the beginning of this month and hearing more about these projects. Operation Blessing have six projects; Healthcare, Surgical Assistance, Clean Water, Education, Disaster Relief and Back to Sound.
The Surgical Assistance programs provide surgical procedures which result in saving lives, curing diseases, improving the quality of lives, and increasing the likelihood of an orphan being adopted into a family and/or being able to lead an independent and fulfilling life.
Operation Blessing China’s cleft lip/palate surgery program matches donors with orphans and other impoverished children born with cleft lips/palates. Since 2000, they have treated more than 2261 children. The program is currently conducted in the following provinces: Beijing, Xinjiang, Henan, Shandong, Shanxi, Gansu and Hubei.
In China, approximately 35,000 infants are born with disfiguring cleft lips and/or palates each year. Most are too poor to afford corrective surgery. Without it these children often live life ostracized from society while enduring many health problems. Infants sometimes starve to death because they are unable to nurse. School-age boys and girls don’t attend school because of their humiliation. The disfigurement is sometimes seen as a curse. Marriage is often out of the question. And meanwhile, many are abandoned by their birth parents to languish in an orphanage without hope of adoption.
With very little Operation Blessing can do so much to change these precious youngsters’ lives. In partnership with hospitals, government, corporations, and caring people — they provide free operations to give children living in poverty or an orphan a chance for a better future. A gifted surgeon can erase traces of the deformity with little or no scarring.
Operation Blessing China’s focus on orphans stem from their great need to be cared and loved. Help comes in many forms, such as providing highly nutritive milk formula in several orphan care facilities, improving the orphanages’ facilities, donating gifts, visiting orphans and training the caregivers in their work and care of the orphans, ultimately enabling the orphans to lead a healthy, happy and hopeful life.
Many children become orphans through abandonment because of physical or mental disabilities, abandonment because of finances and social situations, discriminate against females or from disasters. Over 50% of orphans have a physical or mental disability…they not only need to deal with the hardships the diseases cause, they also have to live with the knowledge that their parents abandoned them. Operation Blessing China aims to give these orphans the attention that they deserve by providing life-saving and life-changing surgeries, tuition, room, and board for their special education, as well as other need-based help. It is our goal that they will be able to live a life of fullness and quality as they move to towards independence in adulthood. In many cases, this surgery was just the thing they needed in order to be adopted into a loving family. For others, it was a matter of life or death. www.obchina.org
Posted: January 15, 2008 04:54 PM