April 2016 Featured Child: Jia

This month, we are featuring Jia, a 12-year-old girl from Little Flower’s Group Home #5. She arrived at Little Flower in April 2014 and has been diagnosed with a lower extremity impairment.

Our Group Homes are a place for school age disabled orphans to grow up in a loving family environment and Jia figured this out quickly. Within days of her arrival, Jia started calling her foster-father ‘Baba.’ In the photo below you can see Jia and her foster dad are enjoying some quality father-daughter time together:

Jia is the oldest of five children in her group foster home.  As the oldest child, Jia helps her foster mom around the house and with the younger kids as well.  On weekends when she is not at school, Jia even helps her mom change the younger sibling’s diapers, all without being asked!

Before Jia came to Little Flower (just before she turned 11) she had never attended school.  Now Jia attends the Chunmiao Learning Center.  Her foster mom remembers the day she came home and wrote her name on a piece of paper. Jia was so proud of her accomplishment and so was her mother!  Every day after school, Jia loves to tell her foster mom about everything that happened at school. She follows her mom around the house recounting what every teacher said and what she learned.  Here are some of her accomplishments from school:

Jia is almost 13 now, and it has been wonderful to watch her blossom in her foster family.  Like most girls her age, she loves wearing new clothes and dressing up.  When she was in the orphanage she had to keep her hair cut short, but now it’s grown much longer and she loves to have her mother fix it in braids and other fancy styles.  We are so glad that Jia is part of our group home project, growing strong, healthy and more beautiful every day, able to attend school, and most important, knowing the love of a family.

December 2015 Featured Child: Gong

For December, we are featuring one of our group home boys, Gong. Gong joined group home #2 in July 2009 as a 3 year old boy. Earlier this year in July, he turned 9 years old. Gong currently attends our learning center and enjoys spending time with his older brothers.

This year has been an eventful year for Gong. He has had the opportunity to participate in some fun activities and outings. In July he spent the day on the beach having a lot of fun!

Who doesn’t like to play with a water gun!

In October, Gong with the help of some volunteers created an amazing art project. Look at him showing off his great work! We are all proud! Do you think he is a fan of batman or just bats?!

Just last week, Gong returned home after being in the hospital for a 21 hour long surgery. Gong has had a few surgeries since he has been with us and this most recent surgery was to fix his bladder related issues. He is currently at home, recovering from his surgery. Here is a picture of him with his dad resting at home after his surgery.

Back to School!

September is the time to go back to school! At the beginning of September, the children in our Group Home Project started getting ready to head back to school after their summer holiday. We currently have 29 children in our 6 group homes. Just over half the children (17 currently) attend our Chunmiao Education Center, and the rest of them attend local schools.

Wei and Ya are working hard at the Chunmiao Education Center

Art class at the Chunmiao Education Center

Right before the new school year started, Cai, Duo and Liang shared some of their thoughts about school with me. They attend a local school called Century Experimental School.

Cai, as the second oldest boy in the group, took charge of our little chat. After giving his answers, he made sure that both of his friends also had a chance to speak. Cai joined group home #3 in 2012. He is in grade 5 this year and his favorite part of school is seeing his friends!  He enjoys Chinese calligraphy, music and reading class.

Duo is in grade 4. He joined group home #1 in 2009. Duo is a super curious boy. He loves learning and he asks a lot of questions! He is looking forward to meeting his new teachers once his school starts. His favorite subjects are painting and reading. He dreams of going to college one day.

Liang is also in grade 4 but in a different class to Duo. Liang joined group home #4 in 2011. This will be his second year at this primary school. He enjoys art class and loves building things. He also enjoys doing his homework after school. He is a very sweet boy.

These three boys enjoy being in the same school together and plan to keep up their tradition of meeting up each break time to chat.  They are very confident that this will be another great year for them at school.  And most of all, Cai, Duo and Liang are glad to share a glimpse into their lives with you.

A Sunny Day in Sun Park

A couple weeks ago, our Group Foster Care children headed to Sun Park, an oasis of green in the middle of bustling Beijing, for a day of rides, games, boats, and sunshine with their families. The China Wukuang Gufen Company sponsored the day, accompanying everyone to the park, including little Li, who was super excited to be there!

The best part of the day was probably the rides. It was a scorcher that day, but there's nothing like a nice boat ride to cool you down! Here's Jia. Doesn't she have the cutest smile?

And there's Gong, steering his awesome turtle boat around one of Chaoyang Park's little ponds.

Not to be left out, the lovely Ling commandeered a dolphin boat.

Now those rides were all well and good, but the older kids loved the more "challenging" rides on offer in the park. Yi and Ying had a great time on this fast, twisty-turny carnival ride.

It was a fabulous day, with so many different fun activities, family, and new friends.

A Record Number of Intakes

April was an extraordinarily wonderful and busy month for Little Flower. It was extraordinarily wonderful because we saw our projects expand and many of our children adopted. It was extraordinarily busy because we had a record number (49!) of intakes in just one month – more than three times as many in a normal month.

Intakes of new children to our Baby Homes, transfers to Group Homes, and adoptions always happen throughout the year. But in April, it was a kind of perfect storm, in which all of these factors came together and led to our current record capacity across all of our projects (we currently have 199 children across our Infant Care, Foster Care, and Long-Term Care projects in two locations).

The main trigger that led to April’s record intake number was the opening of 10 new Group Educational Foster Care homes in our second location in Shanxi Province, where we also have our our second Baby Home and our Long-Term-Care home. These new foster parents all started with 2 children in their families, which allowed us to place 20 children in these new homes. Being a big change not only for the children but also for the foster parents, it was best to give them the time they needed to adjust to their new environment. Steadily, we plan to enlarge these Group Homes until they reach a similar size as our Group Homes in Beijing (4-6 children per family).

Here are two of our new Group Homes in Shanxi Province. 

Zi, one of the youngest children living in one of our new Group Homes:

Sheng, one of the older children, working on his school work:

Some of the children we could place in our new Group Homes were transferred from our Infant Care Home. Moving children from the Baby Home to the Group Homes resulted in unoccupied spaces in the Little Flower Shanxi Baby Home.

Would free beds mean time to relax for our nannies and caregivers? Nope. One inquiry after another dropped in, and within no time, the Baby Home’s capacity reached its capacity once more. However, many of the new intakes in Shanxi happened to be very fragile babies who needed more advanced care and were therefore transferred to our Beijing Baby Home shortly after their arrival. 

Dian, Yao, Kuo and Li: 4 of our new intakes at the Baby Home.

Of course, transfers to Beijing meant more free spots in that second location and more intakes.

On top of all that, we had three of our foster children picked up this month to head off to their forever families in America. It was a bittersweet moment for their Little Flower foster parents, but we were so happy to see their adoptive parents finally able to see their boys after months of waiting. April was definitely a crazy month! By the end of the month we had 61 children at the Beijing Baby Home (our highest number up until then had been 59), and a total of 199 children in all our projects. We're so proud of all of the caregivers and staff that step up to care for all of these children 24 hours every day.

A Trip to the Wildlife Park

Our six Beijing Group Home families recently took a trip to the Beijing Wildlife park, and fun was had by all! Check out some of the photos we took to capture the day.

Very early in the morning, everyone boarded the buses to head to the park. With six families, Little Flower staff, and volunteers, it was a big group! Here's Yi and Ruth, Little Flower's Group Home Manager:

It was early, so some caught a bit more shuteye on the bus.

But others were too excited to sleep!

When they arrived, everyone had great fun seeing the animals, and even blowing bubbles in the kids' play area.

There was even time for some family portrait shots.

Thanks to all of those who helped to organize this wonderful activity!