Shanghai Healing Home: Give a Child a Chance
Text by Lauren Luellwitz, Photos by Dirk Bekkering
Every year, more than 200,000 children are born with a severe cleft condition around the world, creating a health and development challenge. In areas of the world where poverty is common and medical care is scarce, these children rarely receive the medical and emotional support they need to develop and lead healthy, productive lives. The Shanghai Healing Home’s mission is to provide local Chinese orphans with cleft conditions the medical, emotional and social needs required at the most important stage – infancy.
Founded in 2009 by Jamie and Christina Weidner, Shanghai Healing Home (SHH) partners with the Chinese Children’s Welfare Institute and other medical organisations to meet the needs of these children. "It has been my wife’s and my ambition for many years to do what we can to give babies a chance at life. You can say it is a calling upon our lives. With four beautiful children of our own and having been given so much in life, this small way of giving back is the least we can do,” says Jamie. “For us this is a passion that we have committed ourselves to for a lifetime. It is our desire that our children and families throughout Shanghai will continue to take part in this worthy cause."
Currently supporting 25 babies, SHH provides care pre-surgery, coordination and support during surgery and care post-surgery. Combining the natural challenges an orphan faces each day with a deformity that prohibits proper eating habits, many of the babies arrive in ill health. SHH, through their volunteer nurses and well trained caretakers, focus first on improving the health of the child through regular feedings, proper medical care, normal sleep schedules and caring attention to prepare them for necessary surgeries and eventual adoption.
“Visiting the babies truly gives me joy. There is always a lot to do for them and for the Healing Home, and I have never done anything outside my own family that I feel so passionate about. Something about knowing these babies makes you want to find more ways to love and care for them,” Amy Ferranti, a volunteer nurse and SHH Development Coordinator, says. “I have had the joy of seeing many ‘firsts’ with the babies from first steps to first words to a first taste of ice cream. And these are memories I will treasure forever.”
Providing a safe home and care by trained professionals, as well as relying on volunteers to nurture and develop the children, SHH is reaching its mission day by day. Outside of the dedicated team of caretakers and management, the home is powered by volunteers.
“The thing that first struck me when I became involved in the Healing Home was you were able to make a real difference, and sometimes in the crazy life of Shanghai to do something 'real' is very important,” says Sarah Vasey, SHH Volunteer Coordinator. “Being able to get to know the children has been such an honour, and to watch them grow and come from what is a pretty unfair start in life to being joined with loving families that so desperately want them in their lives is amazing. What is also great from a volunteer perspective is that there are so many ways to get involved that can suit almost everyone.”
As Sponsorship Coordinator, I have the ability to link families in Shanghai and abroad with our babies to financially support them until they are united with their forever families. Sponsorship covers the cost of 24-hour care, supplies (food and diapers among other needs) and medical care, however, sponsorship provides much more. I have had the personal joy of sponsoring and loving a little boy named Yi Fei (English name Johnny) who came to SHH this past summer at just a month old. As I watch him grow, see him through his surgeries and cherish every smile and giggle, I find comfort knowing that until he is adopted, his life has been forever changed by the SHH.
Web: www.shanghaihealinghome.com, www.shanghai.beanonline.org
