Sponsor's update from Urumqi
10/03/2008
Update from the SOS Children's Village Urumqi, November 2007
Dear sponsors,
Thanks to your generous help, 8 new orphaned children were admitted to our village this year. Currently, 109 children in total are in the care of our 14 SOS families, 15 children over 14 years have moved out of their previous family and are living in the Youth House, and 143 children (most of them come from our neighboring communities) are receiving regular day care in our SOS Nursery School.
As usual, the newly-admitted young children took time to become used to the life in the village. At the very beginning, due to everything here unfamiliar to them they cried hard and tried to run away from the village. Days later, they seemed to feel some sort of safety and became calm in the care of their SOS mother. After some more days’ observation, particularly with the help from their SOS mother and brothers and sisters as well, they soon almost totally accept the new SOS family. Right now, they get very well with their SOS mothers, brothers and sisters, and feel pretty happy in their respective SOS families.
As you all know, the Youth House was completed and opened last year. This year, 15 children over 14 years old have moved out of their previous respective families into the Youth House, where they share an apartment with some other children of approximately the same age and start learning to manage their own life. At present, most of them are attending junior high schools. Only one of them is studying in a vocational school. And he usually comes back to the Youth House on weekends. The Youths are often involved in some capacity building programs on holidays and in their spare time.
Chinese Spring Festival is always the biggest and most celebrated festival for people all across China. To kids, it is the happiest time all through the year. For this Spring Festival we organised a party for the whole village. Our SOS mothers, children and co-workers gathered together to celebrate the Lunar New Year’s coming. We watched special performances, ate “hot pots“(a traditional Chinese food that people eat out of a pot of boiling soup on a small stove), and enjoyed making and having dumplings together. Later, on the lunar new years’ eve, every SOS family also had a get-together dinner of their own and our children enjoyed opening their presents from their respective SOS mothers and sponsors as well. Right now, as the year of 2007 will end soon, our children are looking forward to the coming of another new year and particularly the Spring Festival of 2008.
In June, in celebration of International Children’s Day (June 1st) our village, in collaboration with local media and companies, organised a special community event in our village. Our children and children in our neighborhood played a major role in the celebration. They sang songs, danced folk dances and demonstrated their special skills. They had a very good time that day. This event was filmed and shown on a local TV channel. It also helped to introduce the concept of SOS Children’s Village and our SOS Children’s development to many people in the city. For this reason, donations we received this year have greatly increased.
Since the Olympic Games 2008 will be held in China next year, our village organised some activities to help them get to know the history and understand the spirit of the Olympic Games this year. We encouraged children to build a healthy body by playing sports in their spare time. For this purpose, we organised a hiking, a climbing, and some other sports activities on weekends. We also named a sports day on a sunny Saturday during this summer. On that day, SOS children, mothers, and coworkers actively took part in all sorts of sports games. All these sports activities helped our children to have a better understanding of the Olympic Games, and encouraged them to keep a healthy body by playing sports as well.
Since last year, we have kept a vegetable garden in our village. Each SOS family has a small piece of land in the garden to take care of. The SOS mother along with her children can decide whatever to grow on their own land. Usually they grow some common vegetables such as onions, peppers, eggplants, celeries, carrots etc. Our children are often involved in taking care of the vegetable garden in their leisure time, which provides them an opportunity to learn some farming skills. What’s more, they can enjoy harvesting vegetables that they grow on their own.
This year, our children made some progress in their school study and skill development. In general, 17 SOS children received various awards in their schools, 12 children won prizes in different national competitions of Calligraphy, Chinese painting, music instruments playing etc. An SOS child went to Russia for an international musical instrument playing competition and won the first place in the end. Two other children went to Beijing, capital of China, for a national musical instrument playing competition and a national Chinese painting Competition for children. Both of them won the second place in their respective competitions in the end.
In the past several months, some of our SOS mothers traveled to other SOS Children’s Villages (Tianjing in north China and Chendu in southwest China) to attend two special training programs organized by China SOS Children’s Village Association this year. Both programs provided our SOS mothers with new innovative approaches in household management and family education as well. After the 20 day’s training programs, our SOS mothers felt recharged and became more confident especially in their kids’ education. Furthermore, a co-worker, who won Ford Foundation scholarship around two years ago, came back to our village after completion of an advanced degree in the United States. Since he had worked in the village for many years, his return inspired many children in our village.
Dear sponsors, your kind help and generous support enable us to do our work. Therefore, we would like to thank you, on behalf of all our children and mothers. We all are aware that we owe a lot to your great generosity. We would like to wish you a Merry Christmas and a happy New Year.
Sincerely yours,
Xuexin Liu
Director, SOS CV Urumqi
Child sponsorship update from Yantai
Update from Summer 2007
Dear sponsor,
How are you? I hope you and those around you are doing very well.
During the first half year of 2007, we focus on children’s education and try to help them build good personality. Here I would like to report all the work that we have done to you:
First of all, our children are mostly from poor country-side and never receive any pre-school education before the come to our village, therefore they have some problems in studying. In order to help them to make progress in studying, our teachers and mothers check their homework everyday and meanwhile help them with their study. With the help of our teachers and mothers, some children have caught up and become confident in study. Some of them have even become excellent students in their classes.
Secondly, many of our children are very naughty. Sometimes they play so long time on their way to school that they miss some classes. To make sure all the children could get school on time, we ask all the children gather at the gate of our village and set off together everyday. We arrange our teacher to check before the children leave. We also visit the teachers at school quite often to know our children’s performance.
Thirdly, we encourage our children to build good habits. We ask our children to wear clean clothes every day and be polite to people. We teach our children to be independent and offer help to people in need. During their spare time we also organise them to do some gardening. Some children plant beautiful flowers around their family. Our village is becoming more and more beautiful.
Fourthly, some of our children show strong interests on music and art. We encourage them to study and find good teachers for them. Recently, one of our girls got the second place on the “Children Music Instruments Playing Competition” held by Yantai city with her outstanding zither playing performance. Our another girl’s paintings have been selected for a picture show held by SOS Children’s Village Association China. As usual we arrange culture band, art classes for our children this summer holiday.
On Children’s Day we held a celebration for our children. At the celebration they met a group of guests from a university as well. These students brought our children lots of programs. On the same day our village also accepted some donations. Some government officials came to see our children with gifts. A car company donated two air conditioners to our children. Our children also got some cookies, snacks and milk from a food company. Through the activities above mentioned, our children feel the love from all walks of life.
We took in three new children this year. By now they have got used to their new family and get well on with the other family members. Ten of our youths have graduated from vocational school and found good jobs. They are very satisfied with their jobs and they will leave our village quite soon. This year five of our youths have got married. I attended their weddings on behalf of all the people in the village. We are very happy for them.
We have achieved some progresses this year. All these come from your concern and support. Here I would like to express our warm thanks to you in the name of all the people in our village. In the future we will try our best to achieve bigger success.
Yours Sincerely,
Ren Qingmei
Village Director
Relevant Countries: China.