While some Brown students flocked to New York and other American cities over the summer, eight members of China Care Brown traveled to an orphanage in Weifang, China, where they worked long hours changing diapers, playing with and caring for babies.
The Brown chapter of China Care is part of a larger organization founded by Matt Dalio, a recent graduate of Harvard University, who created the group to help orphans in China achieve a better standard of living. The organization works to improve conditions in Chinese orphanages and facilitate the adoption of Chinese orphans by American families.
To further these goals, the China Care Foundation raises money to take in orphans with serious health issues and care for them throughout China in houses run by the program. These homes are located in Beijing, Taiyuan, Baotou, Dong Guan and Jinan and house those children that have the most life-threatening diseases and those that require more care than other orphans. China Care also provides support to local orphanages to increase the quality of care in state-run homes.
One of these state-run orphanages is located in Weifang, where several Brown students worked for between three and eight weeks over the summer. There, interns helped other Chinese nurses feed, play with and care for orphans.
"In China, it's illegal to give your child up. So often, people will just abandon these babies wherever they can ... by fire stations, hospitals," said Miriam Gordon '08, one of the interns working in Weifang. "One of the babies at the orphanage was found on a street next to the hotel we were staying at."
According to Kevin Xu '08, president of China Care Brown, the population of orphans in China is close to the population of Texas. Due to many of the political and economic factors facing China today - including ramifications stemming from the country's "One-Child Policy" - an increasing number of children are orphaned by their parents.
Gordon said many of the orphans had been abandoned because of some physical disability, which meant it was often difficult to take care of them.
"There was one baby who had trouble breathing, you could hear each breath," she said. "It would take over an hour to feed him."
The interns worked with all of the children, giving them English names - such as Henry (after one intern's father), Caesar, TaoTao and Blueberry Stink - because they could not remember their Chinese ones. Gordon said this last nickname was given to a baby because the baby "had a heart condition where the blood didn't circulate very well, so the baby's fingers and toes were blue."
Gordon said she was not surprised by the demanding tasks of participating in the program. "I spoke to the interns that went to China last year ... so I went to China expecting to be exhausted," she said. "It was tiring work, but we placed about 35 orphans in foster care since last year, so there were less babies to take care of this time."
Gordon and Andrew Krupansky '09, another intern who traveled to Weifang with China Care over the summer, agreed that the experience, though tiring, was eye-opening.
"In America, our lives are so planned out," Gordon said. "These orphans, their futures are so uncertain. For them, it depends on the people around them, and the funds to get surgeries to allow them to even live past a certain age."
China Care tries to help combat this problem by allocating money toward providing these surgeries to orphans.
Krupansky said he noticed differences in the quality of care given to orphans in the state-run orphanage and those in the China Care Children's Home in Beijing. In a children's home, there was almost one nurse for every child, while the orphanage in Weifang was not nearly as well-staffed.
"I have never picked up a baby before, and I picked one up in Beijing, and he was like a boulder," Krupansky said. "In Weifang, they are severely malnourished. I mean, they still feed eight-year old children with bottles."
Apart from working in the orphanage, Brown students also had to adjust to living in a foreign country. All the interns had received "culture training" in Beijing before traveling to Weifang, and Krupansky recalled a lesson that their adviser taught them: "'You can't go in there being critical, because there's a reason people think certain things,'" the adviser said.
In their free time, Gordon and the other interns had a chance to explore China. "Weifang is a city, but it's not exactly touristy. We definitely stuck out there, since we all looked like foreigners," Gordon said. "The kids would stare and point, calling us lao wei (foreigners). It was hard to get used to, but it was kind of cool, we kind of felt like movie stars."
Though China Care Brown sends interns overseas, the organization also runs two programs here in Providence. One is a playgroup, run on Saturdays for families who have adopted a Chinese child. This playgroup allows the children to interact and learn with other adopted Chinese babies about their culture. They include mini-lessons about Chinese words, songs and a little bit of history and culture. Xu said he hopes that "because we throw these things at these kids, even though they're young, they might be able to absorb some of it."
The adopted parents of these children are those who really push for them to hold on to a piece of their heritage, Xu said.
"Some of these parents drive from Massachusetts for this program," Xu added.
China Care Brown also runs a mentorship program that pairs a Brown student knowledgeable about Chinese culture with an older adopted child. The playgroup and mentorship program will host a joint kickoff this Saturday from 4 p.m. to 6:30 p.m. in the Blue Room.
Liz McDonald, director of development for China Care, spoke about the progress the foundation has made.
"China Care Foundation is still a young program ... we were founded in 2000," she said. "Every year we're learning more."
