Volunteers Needed!

Volunteers make such a difference here!  Truly! Our staff are great, and of course they keep the place going day to day. But volunteers are what help us get better, and if there is one thing I am passionate about, it is getting better and better for our kids. 

This past weekend we had students from SAIS who are part of the Bring Me Hope* program come and distribute Christmas gifts to all sixty of our kids. But they didn't just give gifts, they gave of their time. They spent the morning and part of the afternoon playing with the kids and shared a meal as well. Some of these volunteers have been part of the Bring Me Hope camps and have developed relationships with our kids over the last few years. It's so cool to see how excited the students are to visit the kids they know from camp!

 We also love our "medium term" volunteers like Kaitie and Micah (below). Kaitie came to do a two month internship in occupational therapy. Yippee! We really need these kinds of skills to better help all of our kids. Kaitie worked directly with our kids but also trained our therapy staff, our teachers and our ayis in ways to assess each child and then help each one progress in his or her school work, physical activity and lifeskills, based on his individual abilities and limitations. Her husband Micah helped with translating needs and generally brought JOY and FUN everywhere he went. (He and Kaitie also took my five to lunch now and then to give me some alone time in the apartment. Priceless!) We miss them, but are excited to see where their heart for orphans will lead them in the future.

 I am so thankful to have a young woman here now who is majoring in social work. For the next three months she will be our "Childcare Manager". She will be monitoring the care in all of our homes, looking for areas for improvement, whether that be retraining on current processes or possibly new practices or improvements. She will also (finally) be doing full evaluations on all of our kids. I have done this in bits and pieces since I arrived but haven't been able to just focus on getting that done for every one in every area (physical, emotional, social, developmental, etc).  Thanks, Flick!

We need more people like this who can come for three months (or more) to keep the process going, as well as a Medical Manager/Nurse and an Education Manager. It isn't necessary to speak Chinese.
Short term visitors are also welcome to help in our school, to take kids for playdates and other projects. Like our World Race team that painted an entire apartment, made our awesome video, took kids out into the community and spent time daily with a very fragile little boy who spends all day in his crib.

AND...last but really not least, we need some committed people to take on tasks that can be done wherever you live, especially working with us to find resources (medical, educational, financial) to meet the needs of our children.
What do you think? Ready to put your passion and your talents to work for the eaglets here at Eagles Wings?

Donna
Director, Eagles Wings China

*If you aren't familiar with Bring Me Hope, check them out...a truly wonderful organization and more volunteer opportunities!!

Wordless Wednesday

A New Look at Eagles Wings 2!

Courtesy of the World Race.

They also painted the bedrooms and the living area, though not quite so artistically as this. I can't thank them enough.

Anyone Want to Adopt A Panda?

Meet Charlie our Panda Boy. Charlie needs a family. But even more, there is a family who NEEDS Charlie. He brings smiles and happiness wherever he goes. Not a single volunteer has been able to resist his grins, his chatter and his teasing playfulness; they all want to take him home. I just can't figure out where his family is and why they haven't claimed him yet.

AND WE ARE DONE!!

Thank you so much!
Thanks to a flurry of generous donors over the past few days, we have reached our target and can officially close out a very successful holiday fundraiser for our eaglets. I really can't tell you how much I appreciate your generosity and caring for our kids. I just wish every single person who donated could be here for our Christmas party...it would be the best gift you could ever receive.

Now the REAL fun begins. Our Aussie volunteer, Jo, is doing her research (also known as making a list and checking it twice), which will be followed by several BIG shopping days. She'll be busy wrapping and wrapping right up until it's time for her to leave us.

Again, I want to say thank you to Jim "Bodie" Joseph for his kind offer of his wildlife calendars as a thank you gift and the Girl Scouts of Troop 651 for their hard work in packing and mailing them off. Your calendars should be arriving in your mailbox in the next couple of weeks.  Enjoy...and think of all the little eagles who are having a special holiday thanks to you.

With a VERY thankful heart,
Donna
Director,  Eagles Wings

WE NEED SOME CHRISTMAS SPIRIT!

Our HOLIDAY MAGIC is coming slowly, but we don't have a lot of time.  I know there are more than 60 people who have a heart for the kids at Eagles Wings and want to help make their Christmas merry and bright!

Merry is not very hard to come by around here...our kids are some of the happiest I know. And no, they don't need gifts to find a reason to laugh and smile. But our dream is to give each child a little something extra in their lives, something unexpected to let them know how SPECIAL they are. We don't celebrate Halloween and the Easter Bunny doesn't come to China, but because the message of Christmas is central to our reason for being here, we try to make that Christmas joy come to life for all our eaglets.

But as I said before, we need help. We don't take                                          our holiday festivities from the operating budget. This is a volunteer effort, from fundraising to buying and wrapping. We need at least 60 donations, and we have 60 beautiful calendars waiting as a thank you! What a great way to kick off your own holiday shopping!

See the HOLIDAY MAGIC tab above for all the details (and a peek at the calendar) or click the "Add to Cart" button to the right to donate right now!

Thank you soooooooo much.

Donna
Director, Eagles Wings
Holiday Magic Volunteer
Mom 

HOLIDAY MAGIC!

While we haven't seen any signs of Christmas here yet, I bet the stores are starting to fill up with holiday decorations and reminders that Christmas is right around the corner.  And so it's time to get our holiday fundraiser underway...quickly!  It takes a lot of time to shop for and wrap 60 individual gifts. And it also takes a lot of supporters who will provide the funds we need to make this time of year extra special for every child here at Eagles Wings.

Please take a minute to look at our HOLIDAY MAGIC page, and then make a donation to provide a gift and special holiday dinner for one, two or more eaglets this year.

THANK YOU....from the bottom of our hearts!

Donna
Director, Eagles Wings

Video of October 1st celebration

Here's the first video. Lots more to come. The quality of the sound isn't great, so please forgive. I hope you catch the spirit!

This video is of our primary school staff (teachers, school manager and English volunteer) playing a singing game. They were awesome, and it was a lot of fun. I am so proud of what our teachers have accomplished this year. The school is really a fun, happy place to be, and I hope this video captures a bit of that.

(If you have trouble viewing the video, I have been told it helps to download it to your computer and then play it.)

Donna
Director, Eagles Wings

First of October...

is a MAJOR holiday here. Most people get 7 days off of work...SWEET! Oh, not me.

To celebrate and show our patriotism, our COAT primary school, Xi Wang Le Yuan, had a 1st of October celebration and invited our house managers, volunteers and me to come hear them sing songs, dance and recite. Even their teachers played a singing game!

Here are a few photos. More photos and videos to come!

 

 

With a thankful heart,
Donna
Director, Eagles Wings

I Know It Has Been Forever....

But I hope you will forgive me when you see these faces!  I had a chance to drop by Eagles Wings 5 today and just couldn't resist taking photos until my camera batteries died. (They always seem to give out in Eagles Wings 5...I wonder why!)

 Here are our littlest eaglets sitting at their new "big kid" table waiting for their afternoon fruit snack. (And please don't worry about those serious expressions...I am not sure whether my foreign hair and nose or the sight of the camera is the true culprit, but there usually are lots of smiles and giggles).

Our newest eaglet!

Our littlest eaglet.

This little guy is actually not an eaglet, though I tried to bring him home with me. But I promised his mommy I would try to get a photo. Happy Birthday! Sorry about the serious expression. :(

Some people think I am crazy to come so far to do this job....I think I'd be crazy not to!

Donna

Director, Eagles Wings

Field Trip!

On our way out of town (to the US for passports, visas and a family visit), we spent a few days in Beijing. My daughters and I did the same thing the last time we left Eagles Wings for the US, and we took Hong Wei, our oldest boy with us for some sightseeing. I can tell you there was a LOT of whining from the other big kids who didn't get to go! But I promised them their chance would come, and Hong Wei was only chosen because he was the oldest (eldest?). So true to my word, this time we took the two girls who live with us...YuanYuan and Liu Er. They were SO SO SO excited for the couple weeks before hand, it was fun to see their excitement for the big trip. They turned out to be great travelers and we had an awesome time. Our two Australian volunteers, Andrew and Noela, also came along to see the sights and help me keep track of the five girls!   I'll let the photos tell most of the story. :)

Yuan Yuan on the train

Andrew and Lindsay

Liu Er and Noela

Eating

And more eating

Liu Er and Yuan Yuan meet the Great Wall!

Liu Er keeping the sun off

Kristen and Liu Er doing a photo shoot. YuanYuan was the photographer!

With a thankful heart,
Donna
Director, Eagles Wings

Eagles Wings 3 Children Singing for Children's Day

I haven't had much luck posting video from China, so I hope it works!

Children's Day!

Children's Day is a very special day in China...definitely bigger than Mother's Day or Father's Day. (gulp, which reminds me that I didn't call my dad yesterday! ouch!!)
There were Children's Day activities all around the city for several days leading up to June 1. The orphanage was a special focus as volunteer groups from the area came to bring gifts and celebrate the children for three or four days in a row. The Eagles Wings 3 children performed alongside some other entertainers from the community, including a belly dancer (?), a martial arts demonstration (very well done) and a group of very young wanna-be rock stars. Our kids were definitely the best!  Sadly I am clueless about uploading video so you'll have to take my word for it. :(  (But when they were signing along with their singing, I can tell you I was crying.)

That's not all though! Two of our little girls, XiuXiu and Gao Jing, go a private kindergarten in our neighborhood. Their school put on a BIG Children's Day program that reminded me of our Field Day events in the US. So bright and early (and hot) Zhang Ying, our translator, my 3 daughters and Gao Jing and Xiu Xiu headed out to the big park nearby. There were more than 200 kids there and at least two parents or grandparents for each kid! I will say that the number of dads there was very impressive.

    

FGJ

FXX

FXX, Kristen and FGJ

We did all kinds of relay races, played with parachutes and generally got hot and sweaty, but it was a lot of fun, and I am sure a wonderful experience for the kids. Then we had ice cream while waiting for our ride home. :D

Operation Smile or Guess Who Has A New Lip?!

Our little Nancy had a very successful cleft lip surgery on April 22nd. We are so thankful to Operation Smile and their international team who traveled to Zhengzhou to do approximately 120 surgeries in just a few days. Our visiting nurse, Cathy from Australia, took Nancy and two other children to be evaluated by the team. Unfortunately, only Nancy was able to have surgery, but we are thankful for the beautiful job that was done on her lip and new friends and contacts made.

One of those contacts was a speech therapist with Operation Smile, based in Hangzhou. A very wonderful twist of fate is that Jiaozuo is this young woman's hometown! So she asked if she could come and evaluate some of our children while she was visiting family in the area. Talk about an offer too good to refuse! We were so thrilled to have her great advice as she did one-on-one speech evaluations with 15 children and then spent some time discussing speech issues and some basic therapies with our management team. We look forward to developing this relationship more in the future and also accessing some other services of Operation Smile now that we have made some contacts.  All things really DO work together, don't they?

With a thankful heart,
Donna
Director, Eagles Wings

The World Race

March came in like a lion with snow and wind and on March 7th the World Race blew into town as well! A group of eleven young people enthusiastic to serve and learn on a trip around the world, they certainly made an impact here in Jiaozuo. First of all, they pretty much doubled the foreigner population in our city, and they stood out wherever they went. Second, they brought so much love, joy and laughter into all our homes. And I mean into all our homes. We had team members staying in visitor quarters in all Eagles Wings homes, where they could really get to know our children and our staff in an up-close and personal way. What an amazing experience it was for them, and for us, too. Here's a little bit of what they were up to during their three week stay:

Cindy Pearson and Beth Griswold
Special Education      Physical Therapy

1) Provide care for the children while we did staff training. We were able to do two full days of training on policies, processes, and fire safety for the entire Eagles Wings staff of managers, ayis and teachers. We were also able to conduct special education training for the teachers in XWLY and the orphanage and special needs child development training for staff from Eagles Wings 4 and the orphanage thanks to volunteers from Jian Hua and Christian Action.  During all these training days the World Race team members gave tender loving care to the children whose ayis and teachers were in training. They took care of the blind children in EW2, manned the school and handled the care and feeding of the Eagles Wings 4 kids. They did a great job and brought a lot of joy.

2) Brighten our homes with color! The teams designed colorful murals for four of our homes. Eagles Wings 4 activity room had two walls painted in bright colors, including one wall with bright yellow paint and geometric shapes to bring some sunshine in. In the activity room for Eagles Wings 3, the teams painted a large tree with the fruit of good character which Chew Gim has been instructing the children about. Eagles Wings 5 now has a bright rainbow, a smiling sun and lots of butterflies to inspire our babies. Eagles Wings 6 was painted with an undersea theme, complete with octopus, jelly fish and coral and a bright sunrise over the water.

Rainbows and butterflies at Eagles Wings 5

Eagles Wings 3 Activity Room

Eagles Wings 6

Eagles Wings 4

Eagles Wings 4

Parker enjoys a Blizzard!

Chris - flying along in his racechair

3) Outings! By far the most valuable part of their service to us was the outings they were able to do with our children. Twenty-six of our eaglets were able to go on outings with team members. Two team members took two children (two by two just like Noah) outside for a morning or afternoon of fun geared specifically to those children. The kids were paired up by age, gender and ability. These outings allowed the children to get away from their normal environment and out into the community as well as to get some special attention from the volunteers. What an amazing success! Once they began, the children were anxious for their turn and they talked with great excitement about their experience after they returned. Some children went kite flying, some went to DQ for ice cream, some went to the park, some went for manicures

Mia and Hailey show off their pretty nails

Chad and Zach had fun shopping

 and some just went for a ride through the grocery store, picking up some goodies along the way. In addition, most of the children who were not singled out for these outings were taken outside to play on numerous occasions by the team members.

Chris and Wayne - boys day out!

Wendy and Shaelyn go cruisin'

Barry tries on a new look

Obviously  our first experience with the World Race was a great success. We miss our teams very much. They really were a blessing to us in so many ways. We hope we will have the chance to host more World Race teams in the future. See The World Race to find out more, learn how you can support a team, host a team or become part of a team!

With a thankful heart,

Donna

Director, Eagles Wings
(Please forgive the terrible layout...it isn't as easy as it seems!)