China Care Video

(uploaded to Veoh from China Care parent site)

Our Mission

"The mission of the China Care Foundation is to give special-needs Chinese orphans the opportunity for a better life and to empower youth through direct humanitarian service. By providing extensive medical, social and educational programs devoted to children, China Care makes a lasting contribution to our shared future."

China Care achieves its mission by:

• Promoting and facilitating the adoption of Chinese children into forever families
• Improving the lives of orphans in China
• Empowering students of all backgrounds to make an appreciable difference in the world

Orphanages in China are filled with bright-eyed, smiling children living in conditions that would both shock and depress us. It takes a great deal to dampen the spirits of happy children, blissfully unaware of existence beyond the walls of an institution. These children, the victims of China's one-child policy, don't yet realize why they have been abandoned. In many cases, as they will later discover, it is because they didn't receive the much-coveted clean bill of health from the doctors who delivered them. A disability, whether it is minor or more serious, makes an enormous difference in China, where parents must rely on their only child for support when they grow older. Spurred on also by the fear that they may not be able to provide for their child's disability, it is a truly desperate decision that sees a mother and father abandon their son or daughter to an orphanage.

More heartbreaking still, from our perspective, is that these children are often separated from their biological parents because of disabilities that can be greatly alleviated with surgery and therapy. Disabilities such as deafness, blindness, mild cerebral palsy, albinism, Down's syndrome, epilepsy, cleft lips and palates, clubbed foot and other mild physical abnormalities often condemn newborns to an institutionalized childhood where in other countries they might easily have grown up in the warmth of a loving family.

Deeply troubled by the plight of these special-needs orphans, Matthew Dalio created China Care, an organization that has already made an enormous difference in the lives of many children. Inspired by his success, students at Emory founded a club dedicated to helping diasbled Chinese orphans. It is our goal to give these abandoned children opportunities and assistance in any way that we can, so that theirs can be a more hopeful and promising future.

Emory China Care has established a number of core programs. First, we work close to home by forming local playgroups for families who have already adopted from China. The Dumplings Playgroup is for ages 6 and younger, and the mentorship program is ages 9 and older. We hold these gatherings three Sundays a month to build a sense of community and normalcy for adopted Chinese children growing up in an American family. With a focus on understanding Chinese culture, which for many children does not extend beyond their memories (if any) of the orphanage, we hope to instill in them a sense of pride in their background during these impressionable years. These playgroups also provide a large portion of our club members with a better understanding and appreciation of Chinese culture, while also providing our members studying Mandarin to teach the language and develop their speaking skills. Furthermore, they instill in all of them a deeper devotion to helping the Chinese children overseas still living in orphanages.

We also hold a number of fundraising events for the betterment of current China Care sponsored orphanages and the children living in them. Specific goals include covering the financial costs of surgeries necessary to render certain orphans more adoptable, providing monetary aid to American families seeking to adopt, buying supplies for the orphanages, and sponsoring individual children and their foster parents in China.

Emory China Care is fundamentally committed to providing students with an opportunity to make an appreciable difference. We hope to make worthwhile, valuable and where possible life-changing contributions to the lives of Chinese orphans.