China Child sponsorship update from Tianjin

Update from Winter 2007/2008 from SOS Children's Villages Tianjin, China for child sponsors.

Dear Sponsors, Dear friends,

Thanks to your generous help, all of the SOS children are very happy to live with their SOS mothers and sisters and brothers.

The SOS Children’s Village
By the end of November, there are 102 SOS children living in the village. We have 12 admissions who lost their parents and are from poor areas of Tianjin and Hebei province, among whom there are 5 younger ones. With the help and care of SOS mother and siblings, they quickly suit the life in SOS village and live happily with their new family. Now the younger ones have been admitted to the SOS Nursery School and can do some easy things by themselves. Up to now, we have 8 mothers retired this year, and they have moved to the Mother’s Retirement Flat.

The village has hold different activities with the community, such as party, cultural communication, and donation, in which SOS mothers and children joined and has built good relationship with the community. All of the activities are benefical to both of the village members and the community residents, such as volunteers of nearby universities building one to one coaching style for every SOS child with his/her lessons, SOS mothers joining in the educational activities held by the community, SOS children visiting old people in the Old People’s House and doing cleanings for the nearby community, SOS children taking part in the calligraphy competition and so on.

Under the analysis of current labour market, the village hold a meeting for graduating class students, in which SOS mothers and teachers talked with each other on how to enhance the achievement in children’s studing work and to release their psychological pressure, at last they made effective measures aim to help the graduating class students to successfully enter High school and Universities, which are holding coaching classes for students who needed them such as English, Chinese, and Maths (the roling classes). This year, the Old People’s Newspaper cooperated with the village and build a Social Work Department in order to assist children to find proper jobs or recommend them to as suitable companies according to his/her major. By the end of the year, 13 youth will leave the village and start their independent lives. 3 youth got married this year.

Children's lives through the year

In this September, the International SOS Children Asian National Directors Meeting was held in Tianjin, China. In order to hold this meeting, the village has done a lot of preparation work. Exception for providing the room and board, SOS mothers, co-workers, and SOS children took advantage of the summber holiday to rehearse porformances for it, for example, SOS children strengthened the rehearsal of the formal dancing and chorus and formed a drum group; co-workers, SOS mothers and children strengthened to rehearse the Fan dance, which were highly appraised by the Asian Participants.

During the Asian Meeting, Wang Jinda, our youth who left the village, is the special cook in Tianjin Jixian Big hotel now. He worked as the main cook to cook delicious and traditional Chinese food for the participants, who left a deep impression on them. Ma Shanqing, our another youth, held his own calligraphy exhibition during 6th, Sep to 12th, Sep, which consisted of 100 pieces of his calligraphy works. About 1,000 people came to see it, including participants of Asian Meeting, calligraphists, and good donation friends of different companies. It was reported by the media of Tianjin.

SOS Youth House
By the end the October, there were 5 boys moved into the Youth Flat. Now 34 boys is living there. During the Summer holidays, some youth took part-time jobs near the community as usual, such as sending water or newspaper, serving as waiters in the restaurants and hotels. Now there are 12 youth volunteerly donated their blood to the needy people this year. By this way they want to do something for the society and people who need help.

Youth House teachers and SOS mother increase contact in order to help young men to suit this half-independent and collective life in the Youth House. Meanwhile, young men keep deep contact with their SOS family, especially when their SOS mothers got retired, they came back to help them move house, and often visit the Mother’s Retirement Flat and do some housework for them.

Children's education and supporting the local community

SOS Nursery School
This year, there are 52 children in the nursery school, including 4 SOS children. In this year’s teaching work of nursery school, we invited Tsing Hua Children’s English School teacher to teach children English for free. Except for the daily interesting English lessons, they made new English names for each child, so now the kids say hello with each other by their English names, from which they thought it fresh and interesting and eager to study English. When seeing their kids love to learn English so much, the parents were very satisfied and happy to see their kids’ new progress. Therefor, SOS Nursery School contact with community more and more naturally and harmoniously.

SOS Social Centre
The village fully uses the well-equipped centre to serve the SOS children and the community residents, which provide wider space for SOS mother and children to communicate well with the residents of the community. This year, the centre has offered medical consultation for about 50 residents of the community, and taken physical examination for 33 women from the poor families. The centre hold various kinds of activities for the community, such as Community Culture Activity, Old People’s Show, and Celebrations, which is about 27 times and 1800 people attended. There are about 29 SOS children attending the chorus and dancing classes for free. The centre has received the donated activities 85times, about 3000 people.

Your kind help enables us to do our work well. Therefore we would like to thank you, dear sponsors and friends, on behalf of all our children and mothers. We all are aware that we owe a lot to your generosity. We would like to wish you a very Merry Christmas and happy New Year.

With Best Regards
Zhenlin wang

Village Director of SOS Children’s Village of Tianjin China